he
acted always with a regard to proportion, he was nevertheless a strong
and self-confident executive. Now Cleveland did not comprehend popular
opinion as did Lincoln. In him the desire to lead was paramount, to the
exclusion at times of a proper consideration for Congress and the
people. It has been said by one of his political friends that he used
the same energy and force in deciding a small matter as a great one, and
he alienated senators, congressmen, and other supporters by an
unyielding disposition when no principle was involved. He did not
possess the gracious quality of Lincoln, who yielded in small things
that he might prevail in great ones. Yet for this quality of sturdy
insistence on his own idea Cleveland has won admiration from a vast
number of independent thinkers. Temperaments such as these are not in
sympathy with McKinley, who represents another phase of Lincoln's
genius. The controlling idea of McKinley probably was that as he was
elected by the people he should represent them. He did not believe that,
if a matter were fully and fairly presented, the people would go wrong.
At times he felt he should wait for their sober, second thought, but if,
after due consideration, the people spoke, it was his duty to carry out
their will. Unquestionably if the Cleveland and McKinley qualities can
be happily combined as they were in Lincoln, the nearest possible
approach to the ideal ruler is the result. One Lincoln, though, in a
century, is all that any country can expect: and there is a place in our
polity for either the Cleveland or the McKinley type of executive. So it
seemed to the makers of the Constitution. "The republican principle,"
wrote Hamilton in the _Federalist_, "demands that the deliberate sense
of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust
the management of their affairs." "But," he said in the same essay,
"however inclined we might be to insist upon an unbounded complaisance
in the executive to the inclinations of the people, we can with no
propriety contend for a like complaisance to the humors of the
legislature.... The executive should be in a situation to dare to act
his own opinion with vigor and decision." It is frequently remarked that
no President since Lincoln had so thorough a comprehension of public
sentiment as McKinley. This knowledge and his theory of action, if I
have divined it aright, are an explanation of his course in regard to
the Spanish War and th