And State Papers 413 



when the opportunity comes, if you have thus done 

 your duty in the lesser things, I know you will rise 

 level to the heroic needs. 



AT BANQUET OF THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB 

 OF SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., .MAY 14, 1903 



Mr. Toaftmaster, and you, my Fellow-Members of 



the Union League Club: 



No one can too strongly insist upon the elemen- 

 tary fact that you can not build the superstruc- 

 ture of public virtue save on private virtue. The 

 sum of the parts is the whole, and if we wish to 

 make that whole, the State, the representative and 

 exponent and symbol of decency, it must be so made 

 through the decency, public and private, of the aver- 

 age citizen. 



It is absolutely essential if we are to have the 

 proper standard of public life that promise shall be 

 square with performance. A lie is no more to be 

 excused in politics than out of politics. A promise 

 is as binding on the stump as off the stump; and 

 there are two facets to that crystal. In the first 

 place, the man who makes a promise which he does 

 not intend to keep and does not try to keep should 

 rightly be adjudged to have forfeited in some degree 

 what should be every man's most precious posses- 

 sion his honor. On the other hand, the public 

 that exacts a promise which ought not to be kept, 

 or which can not be kept, is by just so much for- 

 feiting its right to self-government. There is no 



