ght and take care of
themselves. I, for my part, don't want to belong to a nation, I believe
that I do not belong to a nation, that needs to be taken care of by
guardians. I want to belong to a nation, and I am proud that I do belong
to a nation, that knows how to take care of itself. If I thought that the
American people were reckless, were ignorant, were vindictive, I might
shrink from putting the government into their hands. But the beauty of
democracy is that when you are reckless you destroy your own established
conditions of life; when you are vindictive, you wreak vengeance upon
yourself; the whole stability of a democratic polity rests upon the fact
that every interest is every man's interest.

The theory that the men of biggest affairs, whose field of operation is
the widest, are the proper men to advise the government is, I am willing
to admit, rather a plausible theory. If my business covers the United
States not only, but covers the world, it is to be presumed that I have a
pretty wide scope in my vision of business. But the flaw is that it is my
own business that I have a vision of, and not the business of the men who
lie outside of the scope of the plans I have made for a profit out of the
particular transactions I am connected with. And you can't, by putting
together a large number of men who understand their own business, no
matter how large it is, make up a body of men who will understand the
business of the nation as contrasted with their own interest.

In a former generation, half a century ago, there were a great many men
associated with the government whose patriotism we are not privileged to
deny nor to question, who intended to serve the people, but had become so
saturated with the point of view of a governing class that it was
impossible for them to see America as the people of America themselves saw
it. Then there arose that interesting figure, the immortal figure of the
great Lincoln, who stood up declaring that the politicians, the men who
had governed this country, did not see from the point of view of the
people. When I think of that tall, gaunt figure rising in Illinois, I have
a picture of a man free, unentangled, unassociated with the governing
influences of the country, ready to see things with an open eye, to see
them steadily, to see them whole, to see them as the men he rubbed
shoulders with and associated with saw them. What the country needed in
1860 was a leader who understood and