enough to shake the foundations of Government. Let gentlemen who are attached to the Church reflect for a moment what their feelings. would be if the Book of Common Prayer were not to be reprinted for Wery thirty or forty years, if the price of a Book of Common Prayer were. run up to five or ten guineas. And then let them determine whether they will pass a law under which it is possible, under which it is probable, that so intolerable a wrong may be done to some sect consisting perhaps of half a million of persons.

personal

I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has listened to me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue. acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law. and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law; and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as "Robinson Crusoe," or the "Pilgrim's Progress," shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about "great to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable daugh restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a acup great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living. If I saw, Sir, any probability that this bill could be so amended in the Committee that my objections might

be removed, I would not divide the House in this stage. But I am so fully convinced that no alteration which would not seem insupportable to my honorable and learned friend, could render his measure supportable to me, that I must move, though with regret, that this bill be read a second time this day six months.

§ 13

INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT

By Elihu Root

(Delivered in favor of the short ballot amendment in the New York state Constitutional convention, in the Capitol at Albany, August 30, 1915.)

I have had great doubt whether or not I should impose any remarks on this bill upon the convention, especially after my friend, Mr. Quigg, has so ingeniously made it difficult for me to speak; but I have been so long deeply interested in the subject of the bill, and I shall have so few opportunities hereafter, perhaps never another, that I cannot refrain from testifying to my faith in the principles of government which underlie the measure, and putting upon this record, for whatever it may be worth, the conclusions which I have reached upon the teachings of long experience in many positions, through many years of participation in the public affairs of this state and in observation of them.

I wish, in the first place, to say something suggested by the question of my friend, Mr. Brackett, as to where this short ballot idea came from. It came up out of the dark, he says.

Let us see. In 1910, Governor Hughes, in his annual message, said this to the legislature of the state: "There should be a reduction in the number of elective offices. The ends of democracy will be better attained to the extent that the attention of the voters may be focussed upon comparatively few offices, the incumbents of which can be strictly accountable for administration. This will tend to promote efficiency in public office by increasing the effectiveness of the voter and by diminishing the opportunities of political manipulators who take advantage of the multiplicity of elective offices to perfect their schemes at the public expense. I am in favor of as few elective offices as may be consistent with proper accountability to the people, and a short ballot.

ELIHU ROOT. Born at Clinton, N. Y., February 15, 1845; graduated from Hamilton College, 1864; LL.B., New York University, 1857; Secretary of War in McKinley's Cabinet, 1899-1904; Secretary of State, Roosevelt's Cabinet, 1905-1909; United States Senator from New York, 1909-1915.

It would be an improvement, I believe, in state administration if the executive responsibility was centered in the governor, who should appoint a cabinet of administrative heads accountable to him and charged with the duties now imposed upon elected state officers."

Following that message from Governor Hughes, to whom the people of this state look with respect and honor, a resolution for the amendment to the constitution was introduced in the Assembly of 1910. That resolution provided for the appointment of all state officers, except the governor and the lieutenant-governor.

There was a hot contest upon the floor.

Speaker Wadsworth came

down from the speaker's chair to advocate the measure, and Jesse Phillips, sitting before me, voted for it. And so, in the practical affairs of this state, the movement out of which this bill came had its start upon the floor of the state legislature.

Hughes and Wadsworth, one drawing from his experience as governor and the other upon his observation of public affairs, from the desk of the speaker of the assembly, were its sponsors.

Time passed, and in 1912 the movement had gained such headway among the people of the state that the Republican convention of that year declared its adherence to the principle of the short ballot, and the Progressive convention, in framing its platform, under which two hundred thousand-it is safe, is it not, to say two hundred thousand-of the Republican voters of this state followed Roosevelt as their leader, rather than Taft; the Progressive convention, in framing its platform, declared: "We favor the short ballot principle and appropriate constitutional amendments."

So two parties, and all branches of the Republican party at least, committed themselves to the position that Hughes and Wadsworth took in the Assembly of 1910.

In 1913, after the great defeat of 1912, when the Republicans of the state were seeking to bring back to their support the multitudes that had gone off with the Progressive movement; when they were seeking to offer a program of constructive forward movement in which the Republican party should be the leader, Republicans met in a great mass meeting in the city of New York, on the fifth of December of that year, 1913.

Nine hundred and seventy Republicans were there from all parts of the state. It was a crisis in the affairs of the Republican party. The party must commend itself to the people of the state, or it was gone. Twenty-eight members of this convention were there, and in that meeting, free to all, open to full discussion, after amendments had been offered, discussed and voted upon, this resolution was adopted:

WHEREAS, This practice [referring to the long ballot] is also in violation of the best principles of organization which require that the governor, who under the constitution is the responsible chief executive, should be so in fact, and that he should have the power to select his official agents;

THEREFORE, Be it Resolved, that we favor the application to the state government of the principle of the short ballot, which is that only those offices should be elective which are important enough to attract (and deserve) public examination.

And be it further Resolved, that, in compliance with this principle, we urge the representatives of the Republican party of this state, in the senate and assembly, to support a resolution providing for the submission to the people of an amendment to the constitution, under which amendment it will be the duty of the governor to appoint the secretary of state, the state treasurer, the comptroller, the attorney-general, and the state engineer and surveyor, leaving only the governor and lieutenant-governor as elective state executive officers.

That resolution, I say, after full discussion was unanimously adopted by the nine hundred and seventy representative Republicans who had met there to present to the people of the state a constructive program for the party. Mr. Frederick C. Tanner is chairman of this committee on Governor and Other State Officers to-day, because it was he who offered the resolution in that meeting that was unanimously approved by those nine hundred and seventy Republicans. He is executing a mandate. He is carrying out a policy. He is fulfilling a pledge to the people. The time went on and the following winter, in the Assembly of 1914, a new resolution was introduced following the terms of this resolution of the mass meeting, following the terms of the Hughes-Wadsworth resolution of 1910, providing that all these state officers except the governor and lieutenant-governor should be appointed. That resolution passed the Assembly and every Republican in the Assembly voted for it. It never came to a vote in the Senate. Voting for that resolution were four members of the Assembly, who now sit in this convention: Mr. Bockes, Mr. Eisner, Mr. Hinman, and Mr. Mathewson.

Time passed on and in the autumn of 1914 a Republican convention met at Saratoga; an unofficial convention, we are told. Unofficial? Negligible! Here is the law under which it was called, Section 45 of the election law :

"Nothing contained in this chapter shall prevent a party from holding party conventions to be constituted in such manner and to have such powers in relation to formulating party platforms and policies and the transaction of business relating to party affairs as the rules and regulations of the party may provide, not inconsistent with the provisions of this chapter.

That convention was thus called more specifically and solemnly to frame a platform than any other convention that ever met in this state, for that was its sole business. That is what it was there for; to define, to declare, to set before the people the faith and policies of the Republican party; and in that convention there was a report from the Committee on Rules, which embodied deliberation, full discussion and mature judgment, such as no report that ever came to a political convention within my experience ever had. The great mass meeting of December 5, 1913, had directed the appointment of a Committee of Thirty to meet and consider and prepare for submission to the convention a statement of the views of the Republican party regarding the new constitution. That committee was appointed; it met two or three days before the convention in the city of Saratoga. It met in the office of my friend, Mr. Brackett, and there day after day it discussed the subject, reached and voted upon its conclusions and framed a report.

Let me say here, that Senator Brackett never agreed with the committee. He has been consistent and honest and open in the declaration of his views from first to last, but he was voted down in the Committee of Thirty. Their report favoring a short ballot, among other things, was presented to the convention. That report was referred to the Committee on Resolutions of the convention, a committee of forty-two members, among them twelve members of this convention, and that Committee on Resolutions took up the report of the Committee of Thirty and discussed it all day and they voted upon it, and again Mr. Brackett's view was voted down; and the Committee on Resolutions reported to the convention the plank in favor of the short ballot that has been read.

to you.

MR. BRACKETT. Will the Senator permit an interruption? I know you have not intentionally made a misstatement, but you will recall that a report of the Committee of Thirty was not presented to the Committee on Platform until an hour before the convention, in the little. room at the end of the piazza-before the convention met.

MR. ROOT. It is a fact, and that room was the scene of excited and hot controversy for a long period over the adoption of that report, which was in part adopted and in part rejected.

MR. BRACKETT. If you will pardon a suggestion, you said for a long period. It was, I think, about an hour and a half.

MR. DEYO. Will the gentleman give way? I think that lasted until the following day.

MR. ROOT. It did.

When it came to the convention, there was no doubt about the subject we were talking on. The temporary chairman of the convention had