ed the government. That is the point. Benevolence never
developed a man or a nation. We do not want a benevolent government. We
want a free and a just government. Every one of the great schemes of
social uplift which are now so much debated by noble people amongst us is
based, when rightly conceived, upon justice, not upon benevolence. It is
based upon the right of men to breathe pure air, to live; upon the right
of women to bear children, and not to be overburdened so that disease and
breakdown will come upon them; upon the right of children to thrive and
grow up and be strong; upon all these fundamental things which appeal,
indeed, to our hearts, but which our minds perceive to be part of the
fundamental justice of life.

Politics differs from philanthropy in this: that in philanthropy we
sometimes do things through pity merely, while in politics we act always,
if we are righteous men, on grounds of justice and large expediency for
men in the mass. Sometimes in our pitiful sympathy with our fellow-men we
must do things that are more than just. We must forgive men. We must help
men who have gone wrong. We must sometimes help men who have gone
criminally wrong. But the law does not forgive. It is its duty to equalize
conditions, to make the path of right the path of safety and advantage, to
see that every man has a fair chance to live and to serve himself, to see
that injustice and wrong are not wrought upon any.

We ought not to permit passion to enter into our thoughts or our hearts
in this great matter; we ought not to allow ourselves to be governed by
resentment or any kind of evil feeling, but we ought, nevertheless, to
realize the seriousness of our situation. That seriousness consists,
singularly enough, not in the malevolence of the men who preside over our
industrial life, but in their genius and in their honest thinking. These
men believe that the prosperity of the United States is not safe unless it
is in their keeping. If they were dishonest, we might put them out of
business by law; since most of them are honest, we can put them out of
business only by making it impossible for them to realize their genuine
convictions. I am not afraid of a knave. I am not afraid of a rascal. I am
afraid of a strong man who is wrong, and whose wrong thinking can be
impressed upon other persons by his own force of character and force of
speech. If God had only arranged it that all the men who are wrong were
rascals, we could