her than admit the principle that at
some future day they might have to accept compensation for their slaves.

A thousand other instances of similar incapacity might be adduced, but I
will content myself with this alone.

Briefly the precedents induce the inference that privileged classes
seldom have the intelligence to protect themselves by adaptation when
nature turns against them, and, up to the present moment, the old
privileged class in the United States has shown little promise of being
an exception to the rule.

Be this, however, as it may, and even assuming that the great industrial
and capitalistic interests would be prepared to assist a movement toward
consolidation, as their ancestors assisted Washington, I deem it far
from probable that they could succeed with the large American middle
class, which naturally should aid, opposed, as it seems now to be, to
such a movement. Partially, doubtless, this opposition is born of fear,
since the lesser folk have learned by bitter experience that the
powerful have yielded to nothing save force, and therefore that their
only hope is to crush those who oppress them. Doubtless, also, there is
the inertia incident to long tradition, but I suspect that the
resistance is rather due to a subtle and, as yet, nearly unconscious
instinct, which teaches the numerical majority, who are inimical to
capital, that the shortest and easiest way for them to acquire
autocratic authority is to obtain an absolute mastery over those
political tribunals which we call courts. Also that mastery is being by
them rapidly acquired. So long as our courts retain their present
functions no comprehensive administrative reform is possible, whence I
conclude that the relation which our courts shall hold to politics is
now the fundamental problem which the American people must solve, before
any stable social equilibrium can be attained.

Theodore Roosevelt's enemies have been many and bitter. They have
attacked his honesty, his sobriety, his intelligence, and his judgment,
but very few of them have hitherto denied that he has a keen instinct
for political strife. Only of late has this gift been doubted, but now
eminent politicians question whether he did not make a capital mistake
when he presented the reform of our courts of law, as expounders of the
Constitution, as one of his two chief issues, in his canvass for a
nomination for a third presidential term.

After many years of study of, and reflec