ork. The result has been that I have avoided a split and that as a net
result of my two years and the two sessions of the Legislature,
there has been an enormous improvement in the administration of the
Government, and there has also been a great advance in legislation."

To show my reading of the situation at the time I quote from a letter
of mine to Joseph B. Bishop, then editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_,
with whom towards the end of my term I had grown into very close
relations, and who, together with two other old friends, Albert Shaw,
of the _Review of Reviews_, and Silas McBee, now editor of the
_Constructive Quarterly_, knew the inside of every movement, so far as I
knew it myself. The letter, which is dated April 11, 1900, runs in part
as follows: "The dangerous element as far as I am concerned comes from
the corporations. The [naming certain men] crowd and those like them
have been greatly exasperated by the franchise tax. They would like to
get me out of politics for good, but at the moment they think the best
thing to do is to put me into the Vice-Presidency. Naturally I will
not be opposed openly on the ground of the corporations' grievance; but
every kind of false statement will continually be made, and men like
[naming the editors of certain newspapers] will attack me, not as the
enemy of corporations, but as their tool! There is no question whatever
that if the leaders can they will upset me."

One position which as Governor (and as President) I consistently took,
seems to me to represent what ought to be a fundamental principle in
American legislative work. I steadfastly refused to advocate any law, no
matter how admirable in theory, if there was good reason to believe that
in practice it would not be executed. I have always sympathized with the
view set forth by Pelatiah Webster in 1783--quoted by Hannis Taylor
in his _Genesis of the Supreme Court_--"Laws or ordinances of any kind
(especially of august bodies of high dignity and consequence) which
fail of execution, are much worse than none. They weaken the government,
expose it to contempt, destroy the confidence of all men, native and
foreigners, in it, and expose both aggregate bodies and individuals who
have placed confidence in it to many ruinous disappointments which
they would have escaped had no such law or ordinance been made." This
principle, by the way, not only applies to an internal law which cannot
be executed; it applies even more to