nd fewer friends would have to serve, justice is discredited
in the eyes of plain people--and to undermine faith in justice is to
strike at the foundation of the Republic. As for ill health, it must
be remembered that few people are as healthy in prison as they would be
outside; and there should be no discrimination among criminals on this
score; either all criminals who grow unhealthy should be let out, or
none. Pardons must sometimes be given in order that the cause of justice
may be served; but in cases such as these I am considering, while I know
that many amiable people differ from me, I am obliged to say that in my
judgment the pardons work far-reaching harm to the cause of justice.

Among the big corporations themselves, even where they did wrong, there
was a wide difference in the moral obliquity indicated by the wrongdoer.
There was a wide distinction between the offenses committed in the case
of the Northern Securities Company, and the offenses because of which
the Sugar Trust, the Tobacco Trust, and the Standard Oil Trust were
successfully prosecuted under my Administration. It was vital to destroy
the Northern Securities Company; but the men creating it had done so in
open and above-board fashion, acting under what they, and most of the
members of the bar, thought to be the law established by the Supreme
Court in the Knight sugar case. But the Supreme Court in its decree
dissolving the Standard Oil and Tobacco Trusts, condemned them in the
severest language for moral turpitude; and an even severer need of
condemnation should be visited on the Sugar Trust.

However, all the trusts and big corporations against which we
proceeded--which included in their directorates practically all the
biggest financiers in the country--joined in making the bitterest
assaults on me and on my Administration. Of their actions I wrote as
follows to Attorney-General Bonaparte, who had been a peculiarly close
friend and adviser through the period covered by my public life in high
office and who, together with Attorney-General Moody, possessed the same
understanding sympathy with my social and industrial program that
was possessed by such officials as Straus, Garfield, H. K. Smith, and
Pinchot. The letter runs:

January 2, 1908.

My dear Bonaparte:

I must congratulate you on your admirable speech at Chicago. You said
the very things it was good to say at this time. What you said bore
especial weight because it represented what