Promise and Performance 121 



peal. When a section of the people demand from a 

 candidate promises which he can not believe that he 

 will be able to fulfil and, on his refusal, support 

 some man who cheerfully guarantees an immediate 

 millennium, why, under such circumstances the peo 

 ple are striving to bring about in America some of 

 the conditions of public life which produced the 

 profligacy and tyranny of mediaeval Italy. Such 

 conduct means that the capacity for self-government 

 has atrophied; and the hard-headed common-sense 

 with which the American people, as a whole, refuse 

 to sanction such conduct is the best possible proof 

 and guarantee of their capacity to perform the high 

 and difficult task of administering the greatest -Re 

 public upon which the sun has ever shone. 



There are always politicians willing, on the one 

 hand, to promise everything to the people, and, on 

 the other, to perform everything for the machine or 

 the boss, with chuckling delight in the success of 

 their efforts to hoodwink the former and serve the 

 latter. Now, not only should such politicians be re 

 garded as infamous, but the people who are hood 

 winked by them should share the blame. The man 

 who is taken in by, or demands, impossible pr6mises 

 is not much less culpable than the politician who de 

 liberately makes such promises and then breaks 

 faith. Thus when any public man says that he "will 

 never compromise under any conditions," he is cer- 



VOL. XII. P 



