traditional set of
values which it criticises is almost as much alive to-day as it was two
generations ago, and it forms a background to the political faith of
the great majority of Americans. Whatever favor a radical criticism can
obtain, it must win on its merits both as an adequate interpretation of
our political past and as an outlook towards the solution of our present
and future political and economic problems.

The material for this critical estimate must be sought, not so much in
the events of our national career, as in the ideas which have influenced
its course. Closely as these ideas are associated with the actual course
of American development, their meaning and their remoter tendencies have
not been wholly realized therein, because beyond a certain point no
attempt was made to think out these ideas candidly and consistently. For
one generation American statesmen were vigorous and fruitful political
thinkers; but the time soon came when Americans ceased to criticise
their own ideas, and since that time the meaning of many of our
fundamental national conceptions has been partly obscured, as well as
partly expressed, by the facts of our national growth. Consequently we
must go behind these facts and scrutinize, with more caution than is
usually considered necessary, the adequacy and consistency of the
underlying ideas. And I believe that the results of such a scrutiny will
be very illuminating. It will be found that from the start there has
been one group of principles at work which have made for American
national fulfillment, and another group of principles which has made for
American national distraction; and that these principles are as much
alive to-day as they were when Jefferson wrote the Kentucky resolutions
or when Jackson, at the dinner of the Jefferson Club, toasted the
preservation of the Union. But while these warring principles always
have been, and still are, alive, they have never, in my opinion, been
properly discriminated one from another; and until such a discrimination
is made, the lesson cannot be profitably applied to the solution of our
contemporary national problems.

All our histories recognize, of course, the existence from the very
beginning of our national career of two different and, in some respects,
antagonistic groups of political ideas,--the ideas which were
represented by Jefferson, and the ideas which were represented by
Hamilton. It is very generally understood, also, that ne