William H. Taft

“ The representative system, on the contrary, recognizes that government, in the actual execution of governmental measures, and in the actual detailed preparation of governmental measures, is an expert matter. To attempt to devise and adopt detailed legislative measures to accomplish the general purpose of the people through a mass vote at a popular election is just as absurd as it would be for all those present at a town meeting to say, "We will all of us now go out and build a bridge, or we will use a theodolite." ”

“ Of course we all wish penitentiaries to be free from disease, and we are interested in prison reform to the extent of making them as healthful as possible for the prisoners. But this idea of making society a scapegoat and ridding everybody from responsibility for his sins, on the theory that his grandfather or grandmother was wicked and he is only doing it because of his heredity, makes the preservation of law and order impossible, and destroys the peace and comfort of those who are law-abiding. The penitentiary is a place for punishment and reformation. ”

“ Probably the greatest evil that stands out from all the good work unions have done, is the dead level to which they seek to bring the wages of skilled manual labor. Organized labor insists on making a class and then having that class receive the same wages, and it does nothing to encourage individual effort by consenting to the payment of higher wages to the man of experience, industry and skill than to the mediocre and lazy. ”

“ As to the recall of officers, I have only to say that if you elect a man for three years to try to help your city, or state, you must not make him subject to recall at any moment by those candidates or people whom he has had to disappoint in order to do his work effectively. Under the system of recall you are not going to secure the men who will work well by looking ahead to preserve the real public interest, but men who are trimmers, devoting their time to politics and doing as little as possible to avoid criticism. ”

“ I do not believe that ethics need be so faint-hearted. Its first object, it is true, is to understand human strivings and modes of conduct, conditions and institutions, as well as their effects upon individual and social life. But if knowledge is capable of influencing conduct—which Schopenhauer himself would not deny—it is hard to understand why the knowledge of ethics alone should be fruitless in this respect.... ”

“ If we do not disturb those foundations, we can count on the common sense of the American people to bring them back to sane views, and we can rejoice and continue to rejoice in the preservation of a popular government that for one hundred and twenty-five years has vindicated its conservatism and justice before the world and will continue to do so forever. ”

“ No litigants, or intending litigants, would employ counsel if the latter were to assume the duty of extracting from their clients all their innermost thoughts with a view to revealing them to the court. The useful function of lawyers is not only to conduct litigation but to avoid it, where possible, by advising settlement or withholding suit. Thus, any rule that interfered with the complete disclosure of the client's inmost thoughts on the issue he presents would seriously obstruct the peace that is gained for society by the compromises which the counsel is able to advise. ”

“ One count that looms large in the wide range of the indictment against our judicial system is the immoral part that lawyers are said necessarily to play in the perversion of justice by making the worse appear the better reason. Such a public agitation and such an issue in politics lead to a consideration of the fundamental reasons for the existence of our profession in the past, and a further inquiry as to the need for it in the future, as preliminary to a discussion of the rules of conduct that should govern its practice. ”

“ Therefore, our courts, as they are now conducted, and our profession, which is the handmaid of justice, are necessarily so bound together in our judicial system that an attack upon the courts is an attack upon our profession, and an attack upon our profession is equally an attack upon the courts. ”

“ I don't mean to say that lawyers do not differ in the force of their statements, in their logical faculty, in their method of arranging arguments, in their fluency and in the cogency with which they present the cause of their respective clients. Of course the man who is fortunate enough to engage the abler lawyer enjoys the advantage of those gifts with which nature has endowed his representative, but that element of inequality can hardly be eliminated from the administration of justice. ”

“ The great problem of government that is never completely solved and that is changing with changing conditions is how to reconcile the protection of individual rights, helpful to the pursuit of happiness and the welfare of society, with the necessary curtailment of those rights and freedom, by governmental restriction, to achieve the same object. So the adjustment of the duties of the lawyer toward his client and toward the court in the interest of society, are not always easily distinguishable and an attempt to make them clear, therefore, is justified. ”

“ In each party we have the intelligent and the fortunate, with those who are not so intelligent nor so experienced nor so well circumstanced. What will be the tendency of this refusal to recognize intelligence and high character in those who deserve it? It will make the parties horizontal layers in the body politic. It will unite in one party those who are ignorant and unfortunate, and array them against the intelligent and those who have the ability for leadership. ”

“ The present movement for a purer and more direct democracy—the initiative, referendum and recall—is clearly an ineffective method of securing wise legislation, good official agents, or even a real expression of the people's will. The representative system is the most valuable system that has thus far been invented to make popular government possible and the introduction of more democracy, so-called, is a retrograde step. ”

“ The rules of evidence have been worked out by centuries of experience of courts in jury trials, and are admirably adapted to avoid the danger of error as to fact. I fully agree that in American courts the trial judges have not been entrusted with as wide discretion in the matter of admitting or rejecting evidence as they should have, and judgments have been reversed on technical errors in admitting testimony which should have been affirmed. As time goes on, however, the rule against hearsay evidence, instead of losing its force, is demonstrating its usefulness. ”

“ Nor can we yield to trades-unionism when it seeks to promote so-called labor interests by lawless violence and dynamite. The bonds of society will be loosed if we do. I would not for a moment be thought to say that those who are in favor of more democracy, through the initiative and referendum, are factionalists, and insincere in their view that that system will work a good result in the fight against corruption in politics. ”

“ It is not so important as to who comes first as that their order of precedence should be once determined.
The President is made responsible for everything, especially for hard times. Of course his supporters claim credit for good crops, so that perhaps it is not so unfair to charge him with responsibility for bad crops and for everything else that happens wrong during his term. Every President strives to do the best he can for the country. It is a great task, one of the heaviest in the world. A man does not really know, until he gets out of the office, what the strain is. ”

“ The error and injustice that are committed in the public press by inaccurate, garbled and sometimes false statements of facts are increased in their injurious effect by the wider publication that newspapers have today, and the requirement that when a fact is to be proven in court it should be proven by those who have a personal knowledge of it, is one of the most wholesome and searching tests of truth that the whole range of adjective law furnishes. ”

“ He knows that counsel has the right to proceed in the view that his client is entitled to the benefit of every remedy and defence authorized by the law of the land and that the lawyer is expected to assert every such remedy or defence. But it is steadfastly to be borne in mind that the great trust to the lawyer is to be formed within and not without the bounds of the law. The office of a lawyer does not permit, much less does it demand of him, violation of law or any manner of fraud for any client. He must obey his own conscience and not that of his client. ”

“ It is not too much to say that the profession of the law is more or less on trial. It is certain that there is a crisis in the life of our courts, and that a great political issue is being forced upon the people, for they must decide whether the courts are to continue to exercise the power they now have, and what character of service they shall be required to render. Judges are lawyers. They ought to be trained practitioners and learned in the profession of the law before they ascend the Bench, and generally they are. ”

“ The fact that he is supported by bosses is now generally enough to defeat a man, and the charge that he has a machine with him is enough to interfere with his electoral success. Organization is necessary for political success; even reformers find that out after they get into politics, but today there is an unreasonable prejudice against it. The great and good effect of the reform, however, is that corporations are no longer in politics. Of course corruption is not all gone, but it is largely stayed, and there is no longer any chance that corporations can control as they did. ”

“ What we must do is to try to make things better and to save from the past the things which are good. It is often true that a movement that is excessive and destructive in one way, ends by being the basis of great progress after reaction from its excesses has left what is valuable in it.
Our American Revolution, which we are accustomed to regard as quite important—and it was for us—did not really represent a great world change such as was represented in the French Revolution. It grew out of a very unwise, selfish colonial policy on the part of Great Britain. ”

“ We now have a much more complicated government and more democracy will not supply its needs.
The representative system, much abused as it is, is the system that has rescued us from plutocracy. Its laws are the laws that have done the work. Congress has adopted laws that have taken hold of the corporations, and Congress is the most perfect model of representative government. ”

“ I am not complaining of the movement that brings about this initiative and referendum, for that is prompted by a desire to clinch the movement against corruption, on the theory that you cannot corrupt the whole people and that the initiative and referendum mean detailed and direct government by the whole people. But the theory is erroneous. The whole people will not vote at an election, much less at a primary. When the people are thus represented at the polls by a small minority there is nothing that the politicians will not be able to do with that minority when they get their hands in. ”

“ The crying need for a learned and honorable profession of the law was made manifest by the growth of a class of advocates and advisers whose influence was most pernicious. Litigants needed guidance in the presentation of their cases and no learned profession being available, the underbailiffs, undersheriffs, clerks and other underlings of the administration of justice began to practice, without real knowledge. Greedy and lacking in principle, they developed trickery and stirred up litigation for their own profit, just as their predecessors had done three hundred years before in England. ”

“ Counsel ought to decline to conduct a civil cause or to make a defence when convinced that it is intended merely to harass the opposite party or to work oppression. His appearance in court should, therefore, be deemed equivalent to an assertion on his honor that in his opinion his client's case is a debatable one and one proper for judicial determination. ”

“ This array of a proletariat against intelligent and successful leadership produces factionalism in society. Factionalism is a class spirit which will sacrifice the interest of the whole to the interest of the class. It sometimes permeates a majority, but more frequently a minority. It is illustrated for us by the militancy of English women suffragists, who will sacrifice property, art and even life, in order to convince the majority that unless they receive the vote they will destroy all society. ”

“ The value of popular confidence in the verdict of a jury selected at random from a community is great enough to offset any tendency to error that may at times arise from the undue influence of a jury advocate upholding one side of the controversy before them. If the jury is misled by the histrionic eloquence of counsel so that it clearly violates justice in its verdict, the court may always set aside its decision and give a new trial. ”

“ Burke said you cannot bring an indictment against the people, and it is equally true that you cannot indict a great majority of the electorate for not complying with their electoral duties. Suppose you attempt to forfeit their right to vote, you may injure them, but you injure the whole people a great deal more. The 80 per cent of the population whose welfare is directly affected by the action of the electorate, but who are not by law permitted to vote, are entitled to have the more intelligent voters retained in the electorate. ”

“ In fact, it has led to the feeling that everybody is on the same level in matters of character, learning, skill and effectiveness of labor, and, in short, that every man is as good as everybody else in everything. The idea is that men are on a dead level. There is no room for leadership in such a view. Inequality is essential to progress. If you make a dead level there will be no interest in life or motive for effort, and you will destroy the very spring [Pg 88] of progress and the fountain of Christian civilization. ”

“ The jury system, though somewhat crude and not always certain, has advantages that outweigh its possibility of injustice in the judicial system of a free government among a free people. It is important that the people shall have confidence in the courts, and it is important that they shall feel that they may themselves be a part of the judicial machinery. ”

“ The enthusiastic advocacy of counsel when they are properly restrained as above suggested, and the rules of evidence adapted to winnowing out the false from the true, are admirably adapted to bringing about right results. ”

“ The best authorities hold that opinions given under such circumstances are merely advisory, since they lack opposing arguments made by counsel whom the spirit of professional advocacy arouses to industry in the search for precedent. They go so far as to say that answers so given should not conclude the same court in a litigated case arising subsequently. An earnest and commendable desire to win leads the counsel to search not only libraries but his own brain for the strongest reasons that he can summon upon which to base a judgment in behalf of his client. ”

“ We are a successful people in machinery, and so we take our analogy for political reforms from machinery. We found that by uniting various mechanical elements we could make machines which would do as much as one hundred or one thousand men in the same time. So we think that if we are only acute enough to devise a governmental machine which will work without effort on the part of the people, we can sit at home while elections run themselves so well that only what the good people desire in political action will necessarily result. ”