confidence as a practical administrative device. Not only has constant
judicial interference dislocated scientific legislation, but casting the
judiciary into the vortex of civil faction has degraded it in the
popular esteem. In fine, from the outset, the American bench, because it
deals with the most fiercely contested of political issues, has been an
instrument necessary to political success. Consequently, political
parties have striven to control it, and therefore the bench has always
had an avowed partisan bias. This avowed political or social bias has, I
infer, bred among the American people the conviction that justice is not
administered indifferently to all men, wherefore the bench is not
respected with us as, for instance, it is in Great Britain, where law
and politics are sundered. Nor has the dissatisfaction engendered by
these causes been concealed. On the contrary, it has found expression
through a series of famous popular leaders from Thomas Jefferson to
Theodore Roosevelt.

The Constitution could hardly have been adopted or the government
organized but for the personal influence of Washington, whose power lay
in his genius for dealing with men. He lost no time or strength in
speculation, but, taking the Constitution as the best implement at hand,
he went to the work of administration by including the representatives
of the antagonistic extremes in his Cabinet. He might as well have
expected fire and water to mingle as Jefferson and Hamilton to
harmonize. Probably he had no delusions on that head when he chose them
for his ministers, and he accomplished his object. He paralyzed
opposition until the new mechanism began to operate pretty regularly,
but he had not an hour to spare. Soon the French Revolution heated
passions so hot that long before Washington's successor was elected the
United States was rent by faction.