It is the allegory of the river and its ripples over again. Englishmen need not despair of the United States, for the great body of the people is extraordinarily conservative and well-poised. In America, man never is, but always to be, cursed. Dreadful things are on the eve of happening, and never happen. There is a great saving fund of common-sense in the people--a sense which probably rests as much on the fact that they are as a whole conspicuously well-to-do as on anything else--which as the last resort shrinks from radicalism. In spite of the yellow press, in spite of all the Socialist and Anarchist talk, in spite of corruption and brass bands and torchlight processions, when the people as a whole is called upon to speak the final word, that word has never yet been wrong. Perhaps some day it will be, for all peoples go mad at times; but the nation is normally sound and sane, with a sanity that is peculiarly like that of the English. FOOTNOTES: [264:1] I trust that, because, for the purpose of making an illustration which will bring the matter home familiarly to English minds, I speak of the States as English Counties, I shall not be suspected of thinking (as some writers appear to have thought) that there is really any historical or structural analogy between the two. [281:1] None the less my friendly American critic (already quoted) holds, and remains firm in, the opinion that "however strenuous the fighting, the political issues produce no such social changes or personal differences in the United States as have frequently obtained in England, say at the time of the leadership of Gladstone, or more recently, in connection with the 'tariff reform' of Chamberlain." It is his contention that Americans take their politics on the whole more good-humouredly than has always been found possible by their English cousins, and that when the campaign is over, there is more readiness in the United States than in England to let pass into oblivion any bitterness that may have found expression during the fighting. CHAPTER XI SOME QUESTIONS OF THE MOMENT Sovereign States and the Federal Government--California and the Senate--The Constitutional Powers of Congress and the President--Government by Interpretation--President Roosevelt as an Inspiration to the People--A New Conception of the Presidential Office--"Teddy" and the "'fraid strap"--Mr. Roosevelt and the Corporations--As a Politician--His Imperiousness--The Negro Problem--The Americanism of the South.