But Mr.Roosevelt probably prevented it from drifting into the position of an anti-reform party--which if it had happened would have meant its ruin, and would have damaged the cause of national reform.

A Republican party which was untrue to the principle of national responsibility would have no reason for existence; and the Democratic party, as we have seen, cannot become the party of national responsibility without being faithless to its own creed.
VII THE REFORMATION OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT Before finishing this account of Mr.Roosevelt's services as a reformer, and his place in the reforming movement, a serious objection on the score of consistency must be fairly faced.

Even admitting that Mr.
Roosevelt has dignified reform by identifying it with a programme of constructive national legislation, does the fundamental purpose of his reforming legislation differ essentially from that of Mr.Bryan or Mr.
Hearst?
How can he be called the founder of a new national democracy when the purpose of democracy from his point of view remains substantially the Jeffersonian ideal of equal rights for all and special privileges for none?
If, in one respect, he has been emancipating American democracy from the Jeffersonian bondage, he has in another respect been tightening the bonds, because he has continued to identify democracy with the legal constitution of a system of insurgent, ambiguous, and indiscriminate individual rights.
The validity of such a criticism from the point of view of this book cannot be disputed.

The figure of the "Square Deal," which Mr.Roosevelt has flourished so vigorously in public addresses, is a translation into the American vernacular of the Jeffersonian principle of equal rights; and in Mr.Roosevelt's dissertations upon the American ideal he has expressly disclaimed the notion of any more positive definition of the purpose of American democracy.

Moreover, his favorite figure gives a sinister application to his assertions that the principle of equal rights is being violated.