But he suffered no disillusion as to
the ideal of Law, the embodiment and organ of Justice. Legal
quibbles, behind which designing and wicked men dodged, nauseated
him, and he made no pretense of wishing to uphold them.
The champions of the Interests found out before long that the
young President was neither headstrong nor a mere creature of
impulse, but that he followed a thoroughly rational system of
principles; and so they had to abandon the notion that the next
gust of impulse might blow him over to their side. They must take
him as he was, and make the best of it. Now, I must repeat, that,
for these gentlemen, the very idea that anybody could propose to
run the American Government, or to organize American Society, on
any other standard than theirs, seemed to them preposterous. The
Bourbon nobles in France and in Italy were not more amazed. when
the Revolutionists proposed to sweep them away than were the
American Plutocrats of the Rooseveltian era when he promoted laws
to regulate them.
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