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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 Excerpt:...should not be able to do a good thing when they wanted to do it, because of the rights of an individual, is as foreign to the idea of government held by many of our public men, and some of our judges, as it would have been to Peter the Great. They could respect the limitations of our Constitution, if each had appended to it the words "except when the public interest is otherwise," or "except when public opinion is the other way," in other words, if they were not limitations at all. The fine expression I have quoted from Justice Brewer does not appeal to them. Their idea would be expressed somewhat thus: "It is a weak government that admits limitations upon its own power. It is dangerous to take away from the powers of the government in the interest of an individual." The persistent old tendency works its way out by taking a large, We might say exaggerated, view of what is called the police power,' that power by which state provides for the public health and public morals and promotes the general welfare." By making this broad enough we can get rid of the constitutional limitations altogether. Another illustration of the tendency that I am speaking of is found in the attitude of ex-President Roosevelt towards the law. Public men of the type of Roosevelt and Lord Brougham derive much of their usefulness from their innate lawless disposition, and always leave us balancing the direct good accomplished by their reforms against the evil by-product of the precedents they set. Mr. Roosevelt invoked that ground of public policy enumerated by Greenhood, "the prevailing sentiment of the people." He brought it to bear upon Congress, he used it to arm the Executive with new papers, and he thought that he was entitled _to have...