commerce. I have upon another occasion discussed this question at some length and I shall not undertake to go into it now further than to say that the power which is conferred is to regulate, not to do the substantive thing which is the subject of regulation. To build a highway or even a railroad may be accepted as a regulation of commerce since its effect is to facilitate commerce, and thus to condition or regulate it, but the building of a road and the carrying of passengers over the road are two very different things. The building of the road may regulate commerce, but the carrying of passengers and goods over the road is commerce itself, and, under our system, always regarded as a private activity as distinguished from a governmental function. Regulation, however, is naturally and necessarily a matter for the government since it is unthinkable that one individual should have the power to regulate the activities of another individual. Had it been suggested to the framers of the Constitution that provision should be made whereby the federal government might engage in the carrying trade or in any other form of private as distinguished from governmental business, certainly the suggestion would have been instantly and emphatically rejected. The fathers intended that this should be a civil government; it was no part of their plan that it should ever become a business organization. Jealous to the last degree of individual rights and liberties their effort was to abridge rather than to extend the powers of government.

I cannot imagine any greater misfortune to the people than for the general government to acquire and operate the telegraph, telephone and railroad lines of the country. The duties imposed upon that government have already grown to vast proportions. To add the burden of operating all the railroads and telegraph and telephone lines would be to invite disaster. Persons now in the service of the government already number over a million. If to this number we add all the employees in the service of the great private corporations now operating these instrumentalities, the three millions or more, if organized-as they undoubtedly would be organized-would practically dictate the policy of the government. If to the annual rivers and harbors "pork barrel" and the biennial public buildings "pork barrel" we should add an annual railroad "pork barrel" bill,

the public expenditures would increase to such a sum that the three billion dollar Congress would be looked back to as an example of political self-restraint and economy. The Congressman from every district in addition to asking for a public building, would demand a new railroad station, a branch railroad and other expensive additions. Between the effort to decrease freight rates in order to cultivate the votes of the shippers and consumers, to increase wages in order to cultivate the labor vote, and the "log rolling" incident to the making of permanent improvements in order to make each Congressman solid with his constituents, the annual expenditures would be increased to a point beyond the wildest imaginings.

The Ship Purchase Act in one aspect presents the evil of government ownership in its worst form, for it does not propose that the government shall completely occupy the field, but that it shall partially occupy it in competition with its own citizens. The business, it is practically conceded, will not be carried on at a profit, but probably will be carried on at a loss, which of course must be recouped from the taxes imposed upon the private ship owners in common with the other citizens of the country. Think of a government in time of peace-for I recognize that anything may be justified in time of war-embarking in a business enterprise and taxing its own competitors to the end that the business may be carried on to their injury and perhaps to their ultimate ruin and bankruptcy, for successful competition between the government to whom profits are of no concern and the citizen to whom profits are vital, is of course impossible.

If the government were bound to an observance of the same conduct which it enjoins upon the citizen, the situation might present a case under the law forbidding "unfair methods of competition" for the thoughtful consideration of the Federal Trade Commission.

The regulation and control of merely self-regarding conduct, the multiplication of administrative boards and similar agencies and the invasion of the field of private business, which I have thus far particularized, illustrate rather than enumerate the various tendencies of modern legislation and government to depart from those sound and wholesome principles which hith

erto have been supposed to operate in the direction of preserving the individual against undue restraint and oppression.

Class legislation, the most odious form of legislative abuse, is by no means infrequent. In state and nation statutes are to be found which select for special privilege one class of great voting strength or set apart for special burdens another class of small numerical power at the polls.

Next to the separation and distribution of the legislative, executive and judicial powers, the most important feature of our plan of government is the division of the aggregate powers of government between the nations and the several states, to the one by enumeration and to the other by reservation. I believe in the most liberal construction of the national powers actually granted, but I also believe in the rigid exclusion of the national government from those powers which have been actually reserved to the states. The local government is in immediate contact with the local problems and should be able to deal with them more wisely and more effectively than the general government having its seat at a distance. The need of preserving the power and enforcing the duty of local self-government is imperative, and especially so in a country, such as ours, of vast population and extent, possessing almost every variety of soil and climate, of greatly diversified interests and occupations, and having all sorts of differing conditions to deal with. There is, unfortunately, however, a constantly growing tendency on the part of the general government to intrude upon the powers of the state governments, more by way of relieving them from responsibilities they are willing to shirk than by usurping powers they are anxious to retain. Especially does any inroad or suggested inroad upon the federal treasury for state purposes meet with instant and hearty approval. The grave danger of all this is that the ability as well as the desire of the people of the several states to carry their own burdens and correct their own shortcomings will gradually lessen and finally disappear, with the result that the states will become mere geographical subdivisions and the federal character of the nation will cease to exist save as a more or less discredited tradition.

These and many other matters afford temptation to further discussion to which I cannot yield without undue trespass upon

your patience, which I feel has already been sufficiently taxed.

Fifty years ago a great French writer-Laboulaye, I think it was-speaking through the lips of one of his American characters, uttered these words of wisdom and of power, words which are as true to-day as they were when they were written:

The more democratic a people is, the more it is necessary that the individual be strong and his property sacred. We are a nation of sovereigns, and everything that weakens the individual tends toward demagogy, that is, toward disorder and ruin; whereas everything that fortifies the individual tends toward democracy, that is, the reign of reason and the Evangel. A free country is a country where each citizen is absolute master of his conscience, his person, and his goods. If the day ever comes when individual rights are swallowed up by those of the general interest, that day will see the end of Washington's handiwork; we will be a mob and we will have a master.

It is now, as it has always been, that when the visionary or the demagogue advocates a new law or policy or scheme of government which tends to curtail the liberties of the individual he loudly insists that he is acting for the general interest and thereby surrounds his propaganda with such a halo of sanctity that opposition or even candid criticism is looked upon as sacrilege.

But the time has come when every true lover of his country must refuse to be misled or overawed by specious claims of this character. Individual liberty and the common good are not incompatible, but are entirely consistent with one another. Both are desirable and both may be had, but we must demand the substance of both and not accept the counterfeit of either. Crimes, we are told, have been committed in the name of liberty. But either the thing that was called a crime was no crime or the name of liberty was profaned, as though one should become an anarchist in the name of order. Liberty and order are the two most precious things beneath the stars. The duty which rests upon us of this generation is the same that has rested upon all the generations of the past; to be vigilant to see and absolute to repel every attempt, however insidious or indirect, to destroy liberty in the name of order, in the name of liberty, for the alternative of the one is despotism and of the other the mob.

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT

THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL

Address of William Howard Taft, ex-President of the United States, chairman of the Lincoln Memorial Commission, in presenting the memorial to the President of the United States at Washington, May 30, 1922. Other speeches by Mr. Taft are printed

in Volumes III and XII.

MR. PRESIDENT: The American people have waited fifty-seven years for a national memorial to Abraham Lincoln. Those years have faded the figures of his contemporaries, and he stands grandly alone. His life and character in the calmer and juster vista of half a century inspire a higher conception of what is suitable to commemorate him.

Justice, truth, patience, mercy, and love of his kind, simplicity, courage, sacrifice, and confidence in God were his moral qualities. Clarity of thought and intellectual honesty, selfanalysis and strong inexorable logic, supreme common sense, a sympathetic but unerring knowledge of human nature, imagination and limpid purity of style, with a poetic rhythm of the Psalms-these were his intellectual and cultural traits. His soul and heart and brain and mind had all these elements, but their union in him had a setting that baffles description. His humility, his self-abnegation and devotion, his patience under grievous disappointment, his agony of spirit in the burden he had to carry, his constant sadness, lightened at intervals with a rare humor all his own, the abuse and ridicule of which he was the subject, his endurance in a great cause of small obstructive minds, his domestic sorrows, and finally his tragic end, form the story of a passion and give him a personality that is vivid in the hearts of the people as if it were but yesterday. We feel a closer touch with him than with living men. The influence he still wields, one may say with all reverence, has a Christ-like