ons and
its good intentions, its dangerous and its salutary tendencies.

Be it remarked at the outset that three of these gentlemen call
themselves Democrats, while the fourth has been the official leader of
the Republican party. The distinction to be made on this ground is
sufficiently obvious, but it is also extremely important. The three
Democrats differ among themselves in certain very important respects,
and these differences will receive their full share of attention.
Nevertheless the fact that under ordinary circumstances they affiliate
with the Democratic party and accept its traditions gives them certain
common characteristics, and (it must be added) subjects them to certain
common disabilities. On the other hand the fact that Theodore Roosevelt,
although a reformer from the very beginning of his public life, has
resolutely adhered to the Republican partisan organization and has
accepted its peculiar traditions,--this fact, also, has largely
determined the character and the limits of his work. These limits are
plainly revealed in the opinions, the public policy, and the public
action of the four typical reformers; and attempt to appraise the value
of their individual opinions and their personalities must be constantly
checked by a careful consideration of the advantages or disadvantages
which they have enjoyed or suffered from their partisan ties.

Mr. William J. Bryan is a fine figure of a man--amiable, winning,
disinterested, courageous, enthusiastic, genuinely patriotic, and after
a fashion liberal in spirit. Although he hails from Nebraska, he is in
temperament a Democrat of the Middle Period--a Democrat of the days when
organization in business and politics did not count for as much as it
does to-day, and when excellent intentions and noble sentiments embodied
in big flowing words were the popular currency of American democracy.
But while an old-fashioned Democrat in temperament, he has become in
ideas a curious mixture of traditional democracy and modern Western
radicalism; and he can, perhaps, be best understood as a Democrat of
both Jeffersonian and Jacksonian tendencies, who has been born a few
generations too late. He is honestly seeking to deal with contemporary
American political problems in the spirit, if not according to the
letter, of traditional democracy; but though he is making a gallant
fight and a brave show, his efforts are not being rewarded with any
conspicuous measure of success.

Mr.