Theodore Roosevelt

“ In my own country we are growing more and more to believe that the only safe rule in a democracy is to give the people themselves the right, after due deliberation, to decide finally on every subject which they deem of vital importance. The public servants—legislators, executives, and judges alike—must be in very fact the servants of the people. The people must have the right to make and unmake these public servants, in order to hold them strictly accountable for their stewardship. They must also have the right on their own initiative to pass upon laws which the legislature! ”

“ Y. We do not wish to take away the power of the courts to pass on the constitutionality of a law. But where they thus declare a law unconstitutional, we wish to give to the people who made the Constitution, whose fathers died for it, who now live under it, and to whom it belongs, the right to say whether or not the law shall stand. We wish to make the people the supreme arbiters between their servants the court and the legislature when the court and the legislature differ as to the proper interpretation of the Constitution which the people made. ”

“ Too often in the past constitution-makers have sought to appear to give with one hand what with the other they in actual fact withheld. They have sought, while nominally leaving the people free, really to impose authority upon them from without. I would be the first not merely to admit but to insist that there is peculiar need of leadership in a democracy. The very fact that the work is so enormously difficult and complicated makes it imperative that there should be men of the right type, fit to lead, if the work is to be a success. But these men must be leaders and not drivers. ”

“ Above all, there must be in the people the power of self-control. There must always be government, there must always be control, somewhere. If the individual cannot control himself, if he cannot govern himself, then the lack must be supplied from outside. Exactly the same thing is true of nations. Only those peoples who to self-reliance and self-confidence add also self-control can permanently embark on the difficult course of molding their own destinies. ”

“ This limitation upon the exercise of power by the majority should normally spring from their own trained consciences and intellects, from their own characters, rather than be artificially produced by outside devices. Above all, there should be no pretense to give power with one hand while in reality it is taken away with the other. Sham, pretense, hypocrisy, are public vices everywhere, but nowhere are they as destructive as in a democracy. ”

“ If we surrender ourselves to be governed by our own passions and folly and ignorance, then surely in the end, from without the country or from within the country, a master will arise to dominate us. A strong people need never fear a strong man or a strong government; for a strong government is the most efficient instrument, and a strong man the most efficient servant, of a strong people. ”

“ It is an admission of popular weakness to be afraid of strong public servants and of an efficient governmental system. But it is an even more culpable weakness for the people not to shape their governmental system so that they retain in their own hands absolute control over both their servants and their agencies of government. They must remain absolute masters of the constitution under which their government works, and of the human instruments through whom the work is done.
The first essential to settle is who shall speak with authority. In democracies our answer is, the people. ”

“ They are admirably fit to do justice under the law. But they have no special fitness to say what the laws shall be under which the average men and women of the Nation are to lead their lives of toil and happiness. Not only the Federal judges, but the judges of the various States, have assumed the right in hundreds of cases to set aside laws; and in scores of cases these laws have been the very laws that were vitally necessary in order that the conditions of life and of labor might be bettered as regards those of our people whose need was greatest. ”

“ Self-government is the best of all governments, but it is also the most difficult. Only a very advanced people, a people of sound intelligence, and, above all, of robust character, is fit to govern itself. No gift of popular institutions will avail if the people who receive them do not possess certain great and masterful qualities, and, above all, the combination of two qualities—individual self-reliance and the power of combining for the common good. ”

“ They must come to the front, they must take the lead, because they have persuaded their fellow-citizens that they have in them the wisdom, the courage, and the disinterestedness which will make them leaders for good and not for evil. One product of our own governmental system in the United States, the boss, is not a leader at all, but a driver. The position of the boss depends not upon his winning to his support the hearts. ”

“ In Asia itself, the Asia which our fathers regarded as fixed and immovable, there is a stirring which looks as if even in that ancient continent the people in mass were awakening to a sense of their rights. ”

“ Each of the free nations can wisely profit by the experience of the others; each should borrow without hesitation from any one of the others which has something of good. But in borrowing we should adapt the thing borrowed to our own peculiar use and need. Even within my own country, the United States, we have found by actual experience that one State may prosper under one code of laws or constitution which another State finds undesirable. ”

“ The power should always be exercised with due regard to the rights of the minority. No democracy is worth calling such unless the majority possess the power; but no democracy will endure as a democracy unless that power is exercised with wisdom and self-restraint, and with consideration for the rights and the interests of minorities. One of the great tests of democracy is this willingness of those who possess the power to exercise it with moderation and with a proper regard for the rights of others. ”

“ We hold that the people have the right at all times and under all conditions to say by what laws they are to be governed, and that those who deny this theory are not loyal to the theory of republicanism. We hold that the democratic movement of to-day means that all the people must in some shape work together for the welfare of all in order to secure wider opportunity to all. ”

“ Some of these great interests are anxious improperly to exploit the people; others wish to deal honestly by the people, but distrust the people, and, although they desire to treat them fairly, desire to give this fair treatment from the standpoint of a benevolent despotism, which we regard as intolerable. These interests derive an immense advantage from the injection into our Government of reactionary governmental and economic ideas by well-meaning judges of over-conservative temperament, who unconsciously respond to arguments advanced by shrewd and able corporation lawyers. ”

“ Quite unconsciously they zealously served the cause of a small privileged caste and exerted their great power in favor of those who least, and against those who most, needed it. I believe in property rights; I believe that normally the rights of property and of humanity coincide; but sometimes they conflict, and where this is so I put human rights above property rights. There are many of us in the United States who will never rest content while the condition against which I protest continues. ”

“ We do not intend to reduce them to the position in which judges stand in England, France, Germany, and the other great civilized countries of the Old World, where the judges cannot control in even the smallest degree the lawmaking power of the legislature. But we do intend that in these matters of lawmaking and Constitution-making the people shall be made supreme over the courts, not merely nominally and theoretically, but practically and as a matter of actual fact. ”

“ We must never hesitate to test each theory by experience, unless by such a test it is often impossible to tell how a theory will act, and we must ever combine high idealism with practical common sense in realizing the ideal. ”

“ The trouble which has been caused in the United States by the use of the courts in the interest of special privilege to block the cause of social and industrial justice is a problem almost exclusively of our own country. It is, however, of interest to all democracies as showing how important it is that the people shall not let the control of governmental matters slip out of their own hands. ”

“ The shifting of a small percentage of votes may, and as a matter of fact continually does, reverse the position of majority and minority in almost all democracies. It is therefore essential to secure forms of government under which two purposes shall be served. First, the people shall have ample opportunity deliberately to make up their minds, so that the course of action decided upon will not be due merely to whim. ”

“ The highest State court said that the people had no power to pass such a law. Yet again, the people of the State of New York declared that compensation should be paid by their employers for men killed or crippled in dangerous industries; the highest State court said that the people had no power to enact such a law. In other cases various courts declared that the people had no power to limit the hours of labor of women, or to prevent them working under improper conditions at night; had no power to force employers to safeguard dangerous machinery around which women and children were employed ”

“ I do not believe in a sham. I do not believe in asserting that the people rule unless we make the actual fact correspond with the assertion. The methods of achieving this purpose must differ according to the temperaments, inherited customs, and habits of thought of the several peoples. ”

“ But, as was probably inevitable, the power was by degrees greatly abused. This has been especially true during the past thirty or forty years. Nowadays many well-meaning and sincere judges have grown to regard themselves as having a God-given right to declare on their own responsibility what laws the people are to be allowed to enact. This is an intolerable position. The people must be in fact, and not merely nominally, the masters of their own destiny ”

“ Of course each nation has its own peculiar characteristics for good and for evil, and therefore each nation has to face certain problems which are peculiarly its own. But, after all, our likenesses are more important than our differences, and the chief and the most numerous of the questions with which we are face to face are nearly the same, for all of us. ”

“ It deposits this right to govern the people in the hands of well-meaning men who either are not elected by the people, or at least are not elected for any such purpose, who cannot be removed by the people, and who too often perversely pride themselves on having no direct responsibility to the people. ”

“ It was therefore quite impossible even for the wise men who drew up and secured the adoption of the Constitution to foretell all the difficulties that would arise even as regards the governmental workings of the Nation as they knew it. ”

“ Second, when once the people have thus deliberately made up their minds, their decision must be rendered really, and not nominally, effective, and this without undue delay. The people should have ample time to think over a matter before coming to a definite decision. Once they have reached their decision, their action should be real and effective, and their power complete. ”

“ In the United States the courts have gradually assumed certain powers which are purely political. These powers are in no sense judicial. They are not such as courts in European countries exercise. In consequence it is necessary to provide for popular control over the exercise of these powers by the courts. ”

“ This sinister adroitness enables him either to thwart and override the expressed or unexpressed wish of the people, or else so to confuse them that they neither understand quite what they desire nor quite what the obstacles are that prevent their achieving their desires. ”

“ Some of them, in spite of their surroundings, retain an absolutely liberal mind, and these men render service such as no other public servants can or do render. But considering the judges as a whole, their necessary and inevitable tendency is to become over-conservative, and quite unconsciously to get out of touch with the needs and aspirations of the people as a whole. ”

“ In these cases the courts kept the law barbarous, kept it from being humanized, put property rights above human rights, and sanctioned almost every abuse in the interest of property no matter how great the damage it did to ho The judges who rendered these decisions were not bad men—they were well-meaning and honest men. But they had no idea how the great bulk of their fellow-countrymen lived and worked. They knew nothing of the life needs of the average man and average woman of their Nation. ”

“ The people of the Argentine have achieved this high quality of citizenship, as the people of my own country have achieved it. But you and we alike must remember that we can never afford to forget the need of possessing this quality. ”