As a barrier of precaution against more than two consecutive terms the custom embodies a valuable principle.

Applied in any other way it becomes a mere formula, and like all formulas a potential source of mischievous confusion.

Having this in mind, I regarded the custom as applying practically, if not just as much, to a President who had been seven and a half years in office as to one who had been eight years in office, and therefore, in the teeth of a practically unanimous demand from my own party that I accept another nomination, and the reasonable certainty that the nomination would be ratified at the polls, I felt that the substance of the custom applied to me in 1908.

On the other hand, it had no application whatever to any human being save where it was invoked in the case of a man desiring a third consecutive term.

Having given such substantial proof of my own regard for the custom, I deem it a duty to add this comment on it.