say that he is not only safe and sane, but almost infallibly sagacious.

He has clearly defined to himself the scope and functions of his office as determined by the Constitution and the laws. So much the intellect of the man imperiously demanded. Then, having made clear to himself what ought to be done, he has dedicated all his powers to the service of the State; at the same time he has rigidly and inexorably drawn the lines. which separate the office of Governor from the functions of the Legislature on the one hand and of the Judiciary on the other. And being Governor, he has felt it incompatible with the dignity of the office or the duty he owes to all the people of the State to give any attention whatever to party politics or to party organization and management. While he was nominated by a party, he holds himself since his election the servant of the people and of the people alone.

Mr. Hughes is under no illusions concerning his nomination and election to the Governorship. He knows that the party leaders in general were opposed to him. They accepted him only because it was finally recognized that no other Republican nominee could win victory at the polls. My own personal belief

is that no one contributed more effectively to the enforcement of that view than President Roosevelt. As a most sagacious party leader, the President recognized in the hero of the gas and insurance investigations a name to wrest victory in a critical contest in his own State. I believe that in the interest of the party he urged the nomination, and that this pressure was the deciding influence in the convention. But all the while Mr. Hughes stood aloof as though the matter were no concern of his. And indeed he regarded it as no concern of his. He would not say he desired the office; he would not authorize any one present to present his claims or herald his availability. It was a matter solely for the people of the State to decide.

In the Latin language ambition meant a candidate's going about to solicit office. Of such a quality Mr. Hughes is absolutely devoid. It is one thing to fill an office and another thing to get an office. To get an office has never been Mr. Hughes's aim or desire. His opportunities of public service have come to him unsought. It is not that he regards himself as superior to other men or that he does not value the good opinion of his fellow citizens. He does appreciate the confidence and es

teem of his fellows. But if they want him for public service he feels that the call should come from them; and if they do not want him he does not desire the office; so that in any event there is absolutely nothing for him to do. And he is so far from cherishing any illusions as to his comparative standing with other men that he recognizes very clearly that his nomination to public office was due to a combination of circumstances which made him, in the estimation of his party, the most available man. He is the last man in the world to think himself a Moses, he knows he is not essential to the State, he does not pretend to be a leader with a mission, he claims only to be an every-day American citizen, who was selected for the Governorship (out of a number of others any one of whom might have been chosen) because of his prominence in the insurance investigation, which he had undertaken, not on his own initiative, but at the request of a legislative committee. As he would have nothing to do with getting the nomination, as the coming of the nomination to him was no concern of his, so there remained open to him only one way of showing his appreciation of the confidence which had been vouchsafed to him by the people of the State,

namely, by discharging the high duties to which they had called him with all the ability, wisdom, and virtue he could command. To thank any person or persons for the nomination would have been tantamount to the confession that these persons had done him a favor. But from Mr. Hughes's way of looking at a nomination as a call of the people to serve them, with which he had no concern, it will be obvious that such a procedure would have been a stultifying of himself. On the other hand, inclination, duty, pride, and selfrespect all conspire to move him to make a record as Chief Executive which shall amply justify the wisdom of the convention and the confidence of the people.

"A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman," says Burke. Whether Mr. Hughes is in the habit of reading Burke I do not know. But his record since he became Governor admirably illustrates Burke's conception of a statesman. Recognizing that government is a marvellous contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants, that it embodies the collective judgment, intellectual, moral, and practical, of many generations, including individuals wiser

and juster than any now alive, and that the government of the United States, in particular, is the best and noblest system which the political genius of mankind has yet produced, a statesman of the type described by Burke would look with suspicion on all sorts of projectors of innovation that threatened the Constitution and the well-established institutions of the country. But he would also recognize with Burke that "a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation." The principle of correction is as essential as the principle of conservation. But changes are not to be made at random, still less for the satisfaction of some abstract theory or dogma. Every change is to be made for the remedy of some definite evil, and it should be confined to the peccant part only and not extended to unoffending members of healthy functions. And as it is circumstances which render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind, every proposal of reform should be considered on its own merits and especially with reference to its suitability and potency to remedy some particular evil in the existing system.

Now look at Governor Hughes's utterances