function beyond the specifications of the Constitution and not necessary for the exercise of any power contained in the specifications, the enactment would be void. Now, if the law would be void, what power has the President without the sanction of law to trespass beyond the confines of his prerogative? The President is either the executive officer of the Government, vested with unlimited executive functions, or he is the Executive acting under special and delegated powers. Which is he? Is he the general executive agent of the people, or their immediate representative, as was once claimed by one of his predecessors who also had an erroneous conception of his prerogative? Or is he a special agent who shall look to his commission and credentials for his authority? There are unlimited executive acts performed by monarchical rulers, the exercise of which the framers of the Constitution never intended to repose in the President, and, therefore, they circumscribed his functions.

I am aware that persons who are not familiar with the source of organic power are losing sight of fundamental distinctions and are looking to results and not instrumentalities. I am not surprised at this view, but I am surprised that any men occupying the highest positions in the Government and instructors and text-writers upon constitutional law, should at this hour justify a doctrine that strikes down at its very altar the oracle of our faith and substitutes for it a worship that is only temporary and that can not possibly continue and endure. The day will come, Mr. President, I predict it—it is bound to come—when this illusion will disappear, when the people will retrace their steps. And as they flee from the pagan temple they will bear upon their shoulders the Ark of the Covenant and the scroll of the ancient law.

I am now about to conclude. I do not know that anyone will heed anything that I have said or, when once it is buried among the sepulchral archives of this assemblage that

anyone will read the admonition that I have cast upon the tide of thought, but I desired for my own satisfaction to throw out the warning and intimation that I have given, so that in the future when these questions are discussed and studied I can feel that I have performed my duty in helping to pioneer the way for the investigation.

I believe that if the Democratic party would take up as its battle cry the reserved rights of the States and the inviolate constitutional distinction of the legislative, the judicial, and the executive departments, that we could rally around the doctrine the intelligent suffrages of our countrymen. These provisions constitute the logic and the philosophy of the instrument. I can not quite agree with Gladstone that the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off in a given time by the brain and purpose of man. I can not agree with him because we all know that the Constitution was not a spontaneous production, but was the result of compromise and of violent and heated controversy. We know that the conflict in the convention at one stage was so irrepressible and the crisis so serious that it became necessary for Benjamin Franklin, who was not renowned for his piety or celebrated for his devotion, to move that in future the sessions be opened with prayer. We also know another fact, and that is, that there never was the slightest division upon the proposition that I have just been arguing, and that so soon as the convention was assembled and organized, the first formal resolution that was presented read as follows:

That a national government ought to be established, consisting of separate legislative, executive and judicial departments.

And from that day to the advent of the present Administration no one has ever doubted the supreme wisdom of this distinction. This is the theory towards which every other article in the Constitution gravitates as the center of attraction. It is this imperishable distinction more than any other provision

that the instrument contains, that makes the Constitution of the United States now read in every living language and at every university, college, and seat of learning where political science is taught. Not only this, but it is perused with fear and trembling by tyrants upon their tottering thrones. Today in the Persian palace, in a land which for over two thousand years has been under the dominion of despots, it is an object-lesson as the dawn of republican government is breaking over that benighted sphere. It is studied in the camp of the revolutionist and by the glimmering light in the dungeon of the political convict and by exiled philosophers in penal colonies and in Siberian mines. At this hour it is the subject of meditation and analysis at every place where freemen assemble to assert the rights that God has given them and which it lies not in the power of any man to deprive them of.

I know it is said that the people do not care, if the accomplishment is for their benefit, what the methods are that are employed to reach it, whether the Constitution is violated or not. The end justifies the means. I do not believe it. I do not believe that the people are in favor of tampering with the Constitution, and, by insidious inroads upon its provisions, paving the way for dictatorial government. At present both parties are cutting loose from its anchorage. The Republican party has in the President a helmsman bold and tactical, who with his chart of aggression and annexation, is steering for foreign shores, gamboling on the waves, indifferent as to the depths beneath. The Democratic party, at the present time, it seems to me, is on the wild and tumultuous sea, with different pilots, all trying to steer it in opposite directions, and if it does not quickly take its bearings I fear that it will gradually drift toward that bourn from which no traveler ever returns.

Mr. President, this division of governmental power into executive, legislative, and judicial functions is the arch that supports the bridge of the Constitution. Underneath it is the

chasm in which every government of antiquity that has ignored this distinction lies buried in wreck and ruin. Touch not the arch. If we do the masonry will crumble and the entire fabric will "haste to swift decay." Keep the keystone inviolate and intact, so that no sacrilegious hand shall blast or hew it down, and the whole majestic structure shall time defy, as rocks resist the billows and the sky.

ADDRESS UPON THE PUBLIC SERVICES OF
ARTHUR P. GORMAN.

On February 1, 1907, the Senate pronounced eulogies upon the life and character of the late Senator from Maryland, Senator Rayner delivering the first oration of the occasion.

Mr. President, this is one of the many recurring occasions upon which this body is called together to pay tribute to the memory of its departed members. It is proper that these proceedings should take place because it seems to me that the dead are soon forgotten beyond the immediate circle that surrounds them, that it is well in cases where men in public life have been of service to their country that there should be some public reminder and memorial of their deeds. Senator GORMAN was for a long time a distinguished figure here. He was, during the greater part of his political career, the recognized leader of the Democratic party in his State, and for some years its leader in the Nation. It is entirely within the bounds to say that during all this time he exercised a commanding influence in the councils of his party, and by virtue of his long experience and sagacity occupied a most prominent position among its foremost men. He possessed, to a remarkable degree, the qualifications of political leadership.

The question is often asked: What are the elements that constitute these qualifications? This is a difficult

question to answer. Political leaders, in a great degree, resemble all other leaders in the various walks of war and peace in the professions, in literature, and in the ranks of commercial enterprise and business activity. They are born, not made. A man, if he has the talent for his vocation, may cultivate and develop it, but I have never believed that he could create it. It is a peculiar gift that is made up of so many parts that the absence of any one of them would fail to produce the whole. The entire combination in its natural and delicate proportions must exist in order to bring about the effect that is known as leadership. It is a power of mind and singularity of temperament united.

Senator GORMAN, at an early age, appeared upon the political arena, and he received his training from the masters of the art. His preceptors were the formidable chieftains of the earlier days, who formulated great political principles and pioneered the way through the wilderness, often without any guide or compass to direct them upon their journey. Party lines were then closely drawn, and the first lesson that Senator GORMAN learned was the lesson of discipline. He carried it through life with him. It is very difficult for anyone to erase impressions that have thus been stamped upon him, and the instructions that we receive and the opinions we form and the convictions we acquire as our intellectual faculties are being developed, as a rule, become indelible in our maturer years.

Our political sentiments are generally bequeathed to us, and even our religious faith comes to us from the remotest ancestry. In our beliefs, as well as in our habits, we are often the subjects of a fate as unbending and inexorable as the laws of nature. Senator GORMAN was trained in a school in which party loyalty was the alphabet, the curriculum, the test and passport for honor and promotion. He was naturally a man of positive purpose and of remarkable power of will, but he always believed in the doctrine that the party was greater than