s necessary to the
promotion of the American national interest must be helpful to
democracy. More than any other American political leader, except
Lincoln, his devotion both to the national and to the democratic ideas
is thorough-going and absolute.

As the founder of a new national democracy, then, his influence and his
work have tended to emancipate American democracy from its Jeffersonian
bondage. They have tended to give a new meaning to popular government by
endowing it with larger powers, more positive responsibilities, and a
better faith in human excellence. Jefferson believed theoretically in
human goodness, but in actual practice his faith in human nature was
exceedingly restricted. Just as the older aristocratic theory had been
to justify hereditary political leadership by considering the ordinary
man as necessarily irresponsible and incapable, so the early French
democrats, and Jefferson after them, made faith in the people equivalent
to a profound suspicion of responsible official leadership. Exceptional
power merely offered exceptional opportunities for abuse. He refused, as
far as he could, to endow special men, even when chosen by the people,
with any opportunity to promote the public welfare proportionate to
their abilities. So far as his influence has prevailed the government of
the country was organized on the basis of a cordial distrust of the man
of exceptional competence, training, or independence as a public
official. To the present day this distrust remains the sign by which the
demoralizing influence of the Jeffersonian democratic creed is most
plainly to be traced. So far as it continues to be influential it
destroys one necessary condition of responsible and efficient
government, and it is bound to paralyze any attempt to make the national
organization adequate to the promotion of the national interest. Mr.
Roosevelt has exhibited his genuinely national spirit in nothing so
clearly as in his endeavor to give to men of special ability, training,
and eminence a better opportunity to serve the public. He has not only
appointed such men to office, but he has tried to supply them with an
administrative machinery which would enable them to use their abilities
to the best public advantage; and he has thereby shown a faith in human
nature far more edifying and far more genuinely democratic than that of
Jefferson or Jackson.

Mr. Roosevelt, however, has still another title to distinction among the
bre