of ability is concerned,
that other men are likely to be much better judges of his
capacity than he is himself. If men are likely often to overrate
their own capacity, they are also very often likely to underrate
it.

Let me not be understood as commending the miserable self-
seeking which too often leads men to urge their own claims
without regard to the public interests. A man who is his
own candidate is commonly a very bad candidate for his party.

One vote, more than once, would have saved the country from
what I think its wretched policy in regard to the Philippine
Islands. There was just one vote to spare when the Spanish
Treaty was ratified. One Senator waited before voting until
the roll-call was over and the list of the votes read by the
clerk, before the finally voted for the treaty. He said he
did not wish to butt his head against the sentiment of his
State if he could do no good; but if his vote would defeat
it, he should vote against it. If there had been one less
vote, his vote would have defeated it. The Treaty would have
been lost, in my opinion, if Senator Gray, one of the Commissioners
who made it, who earnestly protested against it, but afterward
supported it, had not been a member of the Commission. The
resolution of Mr. Bacon, declaring our purpose to recognize
the independence of the Philippine people, if they desired
it, was lost also by a single vote. The Philippine Treaty
would have been lost but for Mr. Bryan's personal interposition
in its behalf. It would have been defeated, in my judgment,
if Speaker Reed, a man second in influence and in power in
this country to President McKinley alone, had seen it to be
his duty to remain in public life, and lead the fight against
it.

So I think it is rarely safe for a man who is in political
life for public, and not for personal ends, and who values
the political principles which he professes, to decline any
position of power, either from modesty, doubt of his own
ability, or from a desire to be generous to other men.

My twenty years' service on the Committee on the Judiciary,
so far as it is worth narrating, will appear in the account
of the various legal and Constitutional questions which it
affected.

CHAPTER VIII
THE RIVER AND HARBOR BILL

I have throughout my whole public political life acted upon
my own judgment. I have done what I thought for the public
interest without much troubling myself about public opinion.
I a