there is little, if any, limitation upon the kind of evidence which can be introduced to sustain the issue on either side, and the rule against hearsay evidence does not prevail. The shock given to the whole community of the United States by the character of evidence received to help the court determine the Dreyfus issue, was itself enough to show that the confidence of the public in the justice of the rule against hearsay evidence had grown rather than diminished with years.

Yet I am far from saying that we may not have improvement in our laws concerning testimony in court. The protection of those accused of crime contained in some of our constitutional restrictions may be too great. The charge against the administration of justice in the present system is that it is nothing but a game of wits, of cunning, and of concealment, promoted by the rules of procedure. I think this characterization is most unjust and most unwise because it aids the attack on a valuable and indispensable institution without suggesting any real security for such evils and defects as there are. An experience of many years in the trial of all sorts of causes as lawyer and judge and in framing a judicial system convinces me that the present method of hearing causes is correct. The enthusiastic advocacy of counsel when they are properly restrained as above suggested, and the rules of evidence adapted to winnowing out the false from the true, are admirably adapted to bringing about right results.

It is also asked whether members of the Bar live up to these rules restraining their enthusiasm and limiting their proper conduct in the advocacy of their clients' causes. One can reply that counsel differ in that regard, but that generally such rules are fairly well observed. The earnestness of advocacy often blinds them to the proprieties and the requirements of candor and fairness. They fall into the same errors that their clients do, though with a better knowledge of their duties in this regard. They share what has been characteristic of our entire people in the last two decades. The minds of the great majority have been focused on business success, on the chase for the dollar, where success seems to have justified some departure from the strict line of propriety or fairness, so long as it has not brought on criminal prosecution or public denunciation.

More than this, the tendency of legislatures, too often controlled by lawyers engaged in active practice, has been to distrust judges and to take away from them the power to control in the court room, as they do in the English and Federal courts. This has had a tendency to transfer to counsel greater discretion in respect to their conduct of cases and greater opportunity to depart from ethical rules with impunity in the somewhat reckless spirit of the times. The hampered power of the court to prevent the misconduct of counsel in many western states has not been conducive to certainty of justice nor has it been of a character to strengthen public confidence in just results. We find the bitterest attacks upon the administration of justice in those jurisdictions in which the people and the legislatures have themselves laid the foundation for the very abuses they subsequently criticise by taking away the power of the judge.

CHAPTER III

THE EXECUTIVE POWER

I have been introduced at a great many places by the exuberant chairman of a committee who referred to the fact that he was about to introduce a gentleman who exercised the greatest power in the world. While the power of the President may be very great as compared with the power of rulers of other countries, I can testify that when you are exercising it, you don't think of its extent so much as you do of its limitations. I think a study of the relative power of the King of England, the President of France, the Emperor of Germany, the King of Italy, the Emperor of Austria and the Emperor of Russia might involve a very interesting investigation. I am not sufficiently familiar with the power of those executive heads to speak on the subject, though I do know something of the power of the King of England. In England and all of her colonies they have a so-called responsible government. The English King is said to reign and not to rule, while the actual ruler is the Premier, who combines executive and legislative power by virtue of his position as head of the controlling party in Parliament. When the legislative majority fails him, he goes out of office. It is a government responsible both for legislation and for executive work.

With us, as you know, the President is a permanent officer for four years. It is quite possible that he may be elected as President at the same time that a Congress hostile to him is put into power. Such was the case when Mr. Hayes was elected, and indeed when Mr. Cleveland was first elected there was a majority against him in the Senate. It happens more frequently, however, that at the end of two years a majority of the opposing party is elected to a Congress at the mid-term election. Our method has been criticised as rigid and unresponsive to change in popular opinion, but I venture to think that it has some advantages over the English one. It may be good for a country to have an occasional rest from legislation, to let it digest what reformers have already gotten on its statute book, and the period when the President differs from Congress offers such an opportunity for test and rest. We have rests in music, which are necessary to a proper composition, and I do not see why we should not have rests in politics.

I think, however, that we might advantageously give greater power to the President in the matter of legislation. One of the difficulties about a Congress—I say it with deference to that body—is that it does not know enough about the executive facts which ought to control legislation in the course of an efficient government. The introduction of cabinet officers on the floor of the House and the floor of the Senate to urge legislation on the one hand, and to point out the defects of proposed legislation, on the other hand, would furnish the necessary element. This would, of course, make it requisite that cabinet officers should be able to look after themselves on their feet. They would have to know their Department and be ready to answer such questions as are put to cabinet officers on the floor of Parliament.

President Wilson has inaugurated the policy of delivering his message to Congress personally. I think that is a good innovation. A Democrat could have made it, not a Republican. Washington had to go to Congress, so had Adams, but when Jefferson came in he said, "No, that is monarchical, and I will just write a letter to Congress," and so he did. Washington went once to the Senate and attempted to have the Senate concur with him in a treaty with the Indians. He took with him General Knox, who had frequently dealt with Indians. John Quincy Adams, in his diary, describes what happened as he learned it from a member of the Senate at that time. He says that in the conference, Washington found that every member of the Senate thought he knew more about the Indian treaty than General Knox. Whereupon, he, the father of our country, who has been represented as a model in every way, proved that he was no such "sissy" as some of his historians would like to make him out. His character was one which develops into grand proportions when you study it, but he was no mere steel engraving of copy-book perfection. When he got through with that particular session, he turned to Knox as he went out, and said he would be damned if he would come to the Senate