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 essential principles, admirable. It provides all the machinery that is needed for selecting and controlling men who are fitted by nature and training for leadership and management, and as Taussig says, in his great work on the "Principles of Economics," "all progress, material and spiritual, depends on the selection of the right leaders, and on spurring them on to the best exercise of their faculties." Government is not the business of the people; they have not, and never will have the time, opportunity, training, and ability for it. The responsibility that rests upon them is to choose and control the few who can govern, and democratic nations will stand or fall according to the manner in which they discharge it. The best constitution in the world will not save us from decline or disaster if the people are too ignorant or too perverse to choose and support capable and reliable leaders and reject mere irresponsible talkers and vote hunters.

With this all-important reflection in my mind, I would venture to commend our working Constitution to your jealous care.

It is the final result of a long process of evolution, and just because of that you cannot, even if you would, break suddenly away from it without serious embarrassment, and even great peril. You may discard a theory at a moment's notice, but the British Constitution is rooted deep in the experience of our race, and has broadened down from precedent to precedent. It is not a scheme upon paper, sprung from the brain of theorists. Theory has had very little to do with it; experience and thought reacting upon experience, nearly everything. It is a growth, not a sudden acquisition, and just for that reason it is likely to be so well adjusted to the temper