The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-10-18
RECENr punL1CArIoNs.

Simeon F, Baldwin. Little, Brown & Co.,, Boston, publishers.
 Judge Baldwin has published an ex- tremely interesting volume of essays on constitutional and political questions, We have not sufficient space to com ment upon all of these essays, only to say that all of them are worthy of close reading and cannot fail to interest eve- ry student of social science.
 Perhaps the most interesting of them is entitled Absolute Power an Ameri- can Institution" In this essay Judge Baldwin sums up and forcbly illus trates the enormous power of the pres ident of the United States, and has moreover, shown, with clearness, that must startle everybody, how that pow CT has grown within the last half cen tury It seems the purpose of Judge Baldwin's essay to show that this enor- nous growth of presidential power is not the evil that it has often appeared to be, but rather that absolutism is the natural and desirable result of demo- cratic government.
 On page S7 he says:
 There were two theories of the ex- ecutve before the convention of 17S7. Sherman insisted that the executive magistracy was really nothing more than an institution for carrying the will of the legislature into effect, and therefore that it should be confided to one or more officials, as experience might dictate, appointed by that body and removable by that body. Madison 1aI fI, xyjh hat a executive was a representative of the people, rather than of their legislators. During the century that has passed since then England, following the prin- ciple preferred by Sherman has re- duced her sovereign to mere repre- sentative of the legislative will; and we, following the principle preferred by Madison, have raised our executive to the position of an elective king, chosen by the people, and responsible only to them,-a king who, for four years term, rules in his own right.
 Judge Baldwin might have added that the parliamentary government which has since that time grown up in England has been copied and initiated by almost every continental govern- ment with the exception of Germany. Our idea of presidential government, or our absolute ruler, as Judge Baldwin has it, finds but little favor with jur- ists and constitution-make abroad.
 Perhaps the first step towards the growth of presidential power to which Judge Baldwin calls attention was un- der the administration of Washington. "The president, by the Constitution, is to receive public ministers. It fol- lows, said. the first president, that I can refuse to receive them, or, if l find reason to be dissatisfied with them, can request their recall"
 Genet, the French minister, was re- called at Washington's request. This was "the beginning of long line of di- plomatic precedent, which has made the voice of the president. as to foreign nations the only recognized expression of the sovereign will of the United States
 He says again, in regard to our standing military and naval establish ment that, "the orders of the president are always absolute. They may in- volve the pulling down or setting up the government of state. Such was the effect of presidential interposition in Doris Rebellion in Rhode Island, when4the courts declared that which, ever government he recognized as the true and lawful one, they must re- spect
 On page 92 he. says:
 When state of war is fully recog- nized, what lin,i ttssecan be assigned Of the executive power? As it was prac- tically administered during the civil war, it extended, in states that were not the seat of active hostilities, to s-.I; ,;t-;t tc hyv ry warrant; to refusals to obey writs of habeas corpus issued by the state courts; to trials by military courts ending in decrees sometimes of exile, and sometimes of death."
 In speaking of Lincoln he says:
 .'The Constitution, ot his accession to the presidency, did not seem to him the same thing that it grew in his mind to be as the long struggle wore on. He came to feel as he wrote in 1864, that measures. otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming in- dispensable to the preservation of the nation This is a doctrine without limits in the mouth of military com- mander in time of war; It led him to the proclamation of emancipation, as imperial decree as that by which the Czar of Russia, in the same year, abol- ished serfdom in his dominions. We need not stop to ask whether this pro- clamation was legal act. It is one of the great facts of human history; it's practical consequences were immeas- urable, and whatever else it accom- plished, it demonstrated the absolute power of an American president, whether it be rightfully or wrongfully exercised"
 Judge Baldwin thus calls attention to the once famous question as to whether the United States could constitutional ly acquire foreign territory.
 ''It was Jefferson, when in 1893, he bought the Louisiana territory from Napoleon, and by a stroke of his pen doubled the area of the United States. It inevitably moved the center of po- litical rule to the valley of the Missis- sippi. It destroyed the existing bal ance of power between the states. But it was fortunate that under our politi- cal system there was one man able thus to commit the country, without con- sulting 1t, to so great a departure from it's earlier traditions
 One of the most interesting parts of