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Show The President to Date IT IS said that President Taft is ulsappolnted at the result of the election in Canada; that is liable to be true. He was alsd disappointed that the Senate did not promptly ratify the arbitration arbi-tration treaties, and now on the rostrum he is spending much time in justifying his vetoes of the tariff bill and the Arizona and New Mexico statehood hills. He was pledged to tariff reduc-, reduc-, , tion and unless the bills as passed, would, by . their action, have worked some vital wrong, on jf" other clauses of the tariff, that is, unless if their "" indirect result would have done more harm than their direct effect, he had no legitimate reason for vetoing the bill. We think,- too, he made a great mistake in vetoing the statehood bill; that his approval on tho score that he did not feel justified in denying statehood to many -thousand American citizens, though at the same' time he il desired to protest against the recall clause so far as judges were included would have been the wiser course. We would not say this now, except that we said it before his veto. The reciprocity and arbitration treaties were, so far as he was concerned, purely administration measures. The people of the United States fight shy of such measures, unless the strong men of tho nation, those sent to represent the people in Congress, are called in, consulted, and approve I of them. The President saw what came to Presi dent Roosevelt when he sought to magnify execu-t execu-t tive power. That is always distasteful to the people. Prob- , ably tho moBt comspicuous example was when President Cleveland bulldozed tho silver measure a through in the extraordinary session of Congress I " in 1893 and when, a little later, he tried to do L the same thing with the Wilson tariff bill. The P result was the repudiation of this President's I party for seventeen years. i It is for these things that we think that no M President should be permitted, under our laws, "' to immediately succeed himself, for no matter j, how wholly a President may think he has conse- crated his life to his country, the hope of re- election will have its effect; he will want to Big s' nally distinguish himself in some way to draw to himself the people's approval and admiration; to hold for himself the center of the stage. He i & may personally be unconscious of the fact, but j it is the fact all the same. The case of Mr. Lincoln may be cited as one I who sought a second term. If he did, it was but a subordinate desire. i When he was a second time elected, the end of the war was in sight. Anyone "who will read the Democratic platform of 1864 will see as clear as the sunbeams that, through the lines runs the confession that the confederacy is doomed, and we must still give it a peaceful death and at the Bame time save the Democratic party, Mr. Lincoln Lin-coln saw this too, and he doubtless saw that when the finish came, then the country would be like the) ship when in a great storm and the waves are at their height, the winds suddenly cease and the ship loses its steerage way. It pitches and rolls in the tumbling seas and its deck is more than half the time awash. It was for that if anything that he wished to be a second time tied to the wheel, until the ship could again be put upon her course. He might have done calmly what Andrew Johnson in bitterness and wrath and with a muddled brain tried in vain to accomplish. President Taft admits now that he has made some mistakes, which is a good sign, and he has yet time to recover all the ground that he has lost. . |