"The generous spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought."
The world, in time, will judge of the amount of knowledge and the degree of purely intellectual force that Mr. Wilson has applied in his field of study. A contemporary cannot well pronounce such a judgment, especially if the province be not his own.
In the small space at my disposal I shall try, first, to say what I think is the political conception or idea upon which Mr. Wilson has looked so steadily and with so deep emotion that he has made of it a poetical subject. And then I shall venture to distinguish those processes of imagination, that artistic method, which we call style, by which he has elucidated its meaning for his readers so as to win for it their intelligent and moved regard. The inquiry will take into account his earliest book, _Congressional Government_, published in 1885, _Division and Reunion_, 1893, _An Old Master and Other Political Essays_, 1893, _Mere Literature and Other Essays_, 1896, _George Washington_, 1897, _The State_, written 1889, rewritten 1898, _A History of the American People_, 1902, _Constitutional Government in the United States_, 1908, and a volume, issued very recently in England, containing some of the President's statements on the war and entitled _America and Freedom_.
Like a strong current through these works runs the doctrine that in a good government the law-making power should be also the administering power and should bear full and specific responsibility; safeguards against ill-considered action being provided in two directions, by the people on the one hand, and on the other hand by law and custom, these latter being considered historically, as an organic growth. He finds the elements and essentials of this doctrine in our Constitution, though somewhat obscured by the old "literary" theory of checks and balances. He finds it more fully acknowledged in the British Constitution. He finds it originating in our English race, enunciated at Runnymede, developing by a slow but natural growth in English history, sanctioned in the Petition of Right, the Revolution of 1688, and the Declaration of Rights, achieved for us in our own Revolution, and illustrated by the implied powers of Congress and the more directly exercised powers of the House of Commons. It is a corollary of this doctrine that the President of the United States, to whom in the veto and in his peculiar relations to the Senate our Constitution gives a very real legislative function, should associate himself closely with Congress, not merely as one who may annul but also as one who initiates policies and helps to translate them into laws. In his _Congressional Government_, begun when he was a student in Princeton and finished before he was twenty-eight years old, Mr. Wilson clearly indicates his dissatisfaction with the tradition which would set the executive apart from the legislative power as a check against it and not a coöperating element; and it is a remarkable proof of the man's integrity and persistent personality that one of his first acts as President was to go before the Congress as if he were its agent.