Our government, on the other hand, is designedly weak in the executive and strong in the legislative department. When we broke away, at the beginning of our history, from a monarchy and from a monarch who was impatient of legislative interference, the pendulum swang to the other side, carrying us to the opposite extreme. We safeguarded ourselves against the possibility of a central power of overweening strength. And all our history has been the history of a powerful legislative and a comparatively weak executive. To us bureaucracy is hateful. We protest as a people against an office-holding class. Every citizen feels that he too may become an office-holder--is looking forward, possibly, to that consummation. This may explain the indulgence with which we regard the faults of those actually in office. If at the end of its term in office an administration is able to account in some way for all the money it has handled, no further questions are asked. As to the quality of the service rendered for the money, that is a matter not to be dwelt upon with painful emphasis. Such laxity will hardly suffice for the administration of colonies planted amidst remote peoples of another race, requiring delicate handling and the tactful management which can come only from special knowledge and training. Nor is such special knowledge to be gained in the brief term of one administration's power. Much less can the matter be left to the national luck or even the national cleverness. "There are some difficulties," said one of our public men recently, "that do not yield to mere enthusiasm." We must have a strong administrative arm to the government, and the question is, how such an adjunct is to be fitted upon the existing institutions, theories and traditions of our government. I do not doubt that it _will_ be; simply point out that here is a matter for profound thought and honest endeavor along new lines. "There is no form of government," said Dr. Franklin to his colleagues in the federal convention, "that may not be a blessing if it is well administered." There is no legitimate task or emergency to which our government may not prove adequate if wisely and liberally directed. We cannot throw overboard the wisdom of our fathers, but we are bound to construe the precepts they laid down in the light of new emergencies as they arise. The words of Lincoln, uttered in 1860 at Cooper Union, when the extension or repression of slavery was before the country as an issue, are equally applicable to the issue which confronts us now: