It made Americans more sensitive to a national idea and more conscious of their national responsibilities, and it indirectly helped to place in the Presidential chair the man who, as I have said, represented both the national idea and the spirit of reform.
The sincere and intelligent combination of those two ideas is bound to issue in the Hamiltonian practice of constructive national legislation.
Of course Theodore Roosevelt is Hamiltonian with a difference.
Hamilton's fatal error consisted in his attempt to make the Federal organization not merely the effective engine of the national interest, but also a bulwark against the rising tide of democracy.

The new Federalism or rather new Nationalism is not in any way inimical to democracy.

On the contrary, not only does Mr.Roosevelt believe himself to be an unimpeachable democrat in theory, but he has given his fellow-countrymen a useful example of the way in which a college-bred and a well-to-do man can become by somewhat forcible means a good practical democrat.

The whole tendency of his programme is to give a democratic meaning and purpose to the Hamiltonian tradition and method.
He proposes to use the power and the resources of the Federal government for the purpose of making his countrymen a more complete democracy in organization and practice; but he does not make these proposals, as Mr.
Bryan does, gingerly and with a bad conscience.

He makes them with a frank and full confidence in an efficient national organization as the necessary agent of the national interest and purpose.