s, the strong men of the country, they who
must have a free hand for developing its resources, to give them
privileges and immunities beyond what can be permitted the ordinary
citizen or corporation--that is a course which, however offensive to
abstract justice, still has, as it seems to me, a practical justice in
it, and, at any rate, must be pursued so long as the masses of the
voters are short-sighted, unreasoning and in nose-rings to political
machines. A man's rights, whatever they may be in theory, are in
practice only what he has the intelligence and the power to compel.
But, for the sake of the nation, for the upholding of civilization
itself, these over-powerful interests should never be given their heads,
should be restrained as closely as may be to their rights--their
_practical_ rights. Goodrich had neither the sagacity nor the
patriotism--nor the force of will, for that matter--to keep them within
the limits of decency and discretion. Hence the riot of plunder and
privilege which revolted and alarmed me when I came to Washington and
saw politics in the country-wide, yes, history-wide, horizon of that
view-point.

Probably I should have been more leisurely in bringing my presidential
plans to a focus, had I not seen how great and how near was the peril to
my party. It seemed to me, not indeed a perfect or even a satisfactory,
but the best available, instrument for holding the balances of order as
even as might be between our country's two opposing elements of
disorder--the greedy plunderers and the rapidly infuriating plundered.
And I saw that no time was to be lost, if the party was not to be blown
to fragments. The first mutterings of the storm were in our summary
ejection from control of the House in the midway election. If the party
were not to be dismembered, I must oust Goodrich, must defeat his plans
for nominating Cromwell, must nominate Burbank instead. If I should
succeed in electing him, I reasoned that I could through him carry out
my policy of moderation and _practical_ patriotism--to yield to the
powerful few a minimum of what they could compel, to give to the
prostrate but potentially powerful many at least enough to keep them
quiet--a stomachful. The world may have advanced; but patriotism still
remains the art of restraining the arrogance of full stomachs and the
anger of empty ones.

In Cromwell, Goodrich believed he had a candidate with sufficient hold
upon the rank and file of the party