The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-03-18
TAFT DEN0UNCES REALIZATION OF POPULAR WILL ABOVE
 THE WRITTEN CONSTITUTION
There Is No Rule For Ascenaining What Public Sentiment Is, Asserts The
 President
Soap Box Presidential Primary Open Avenue For Fraud and Violence Unless Ample Legal Machinery Provded-In Secretly Yelled Slap Roosevelt Executive Denounces Those Who Make Irresponsible Assaults
Special from United Press.)

Special from United Press)
 Boston, March S.-Denouncing a "soap box" Presidential primary as an "open avenue for fraud and violence unless properly safeguarded by legal regulations, President Taft, today, gave his reasons for opposing a pri- mary unless ample legal machinery is provided. The President spoke to the general court of the legislature of Massachusetts. In discussing the asi- tation for the recall of judges and the recall of judicial decisions, the President declared that it is impossi- ble for all the people to take direct part in all the functions of the gov ernment. He said the constitution founded a government 'of the people, by a representative of the people,
 He denounced the proposition that whatever is right is constitutional.'
 Many read a direct attack on Colonel Roosevelt into the concluding statement of the President, when, af- ter deploring the agitation against the courts and the constitution, he said:
 Irresponsible assaults upon either intemperate language or on baseless assumptions of corruption or bias, or incompetency, made by those whose statements have influence with any part of the people, are a serious menace to enduring government
 Continuing, the President said, in part:
 "One can easily discover a tendency in modern politics to exalt above the written law and believe the written constitution what is called popular will as if that were a higher law to which We must all admit allegiance and, by obeying it, ignore or trans gress statutory and constitutional limitation. This possibility is not stated exactly in the form of an as- sertion that judges and others are to ignore statutes and constitutions be- cause of a conflicting popular will but it is in the mere insidiOuS pro- position that plain construction of the statute or of the constitution Is to be defeated and a strained and other wise impossible construction put upon the language of the statute or con stitution, in deference to what is sup posed to be the popular will. There is no rule for ascertaining what this popular will is except the observation and imagination of the person who IS appealing to it.
 "The continued reiteration of the proposition Let the people rule if it has any significance at all, and is ut tered otherwise than to f1atter the people, is intended to be a reflection on the government that we have handed down to the present time. Now, in spite of all the corruption, in spite of all the machine politics, in spite of every defect in operation of our government that can be pointed out I do not hesitate to say that the history of the last 135 years shows that the people have ruled.
 ''The occasion for these remarks is the attack upon our judiciary and the proposal, by judicial recall, or recall of judicial decisions, to destroy it's in- dependence and thus to take away from the arch of government the key stone. I deny that there is in the
 decisions of the courts or the sue
 cessor of the judges or the result of litigation that which justifies such a radical innovation.
 "I do not hesitate to say that ir my judgment, @ voluntary primary outside the law, known by it's in formal character as soap box pri- full opportunity to the electors o1 the other party to cast unfair votes and without the sanction and safe guard of penal provisions in respect to casting and counting the ballots is an open avenue for fraud and vio- lence. Wherever full and fair notice of the election can be given, where ever adequate election safeguards car be thrown around to protect a pre- ferential primary for the presidency I favor it and welcome it.
 ''It is eminently appropriate that ir every election and in the discussion 1 of all issues that affect the republic the popular will and of the rights o1 the people. This is government based on popular control. But it i: impossible for all the people to take direct part in all governmental func' tions. They must be represented by general will. In other words, ou1 government was a government of the people, for the people, by a repre-, sentative part of the people under z fundamental compact which ha:
 vindicated it's wisdom, it's equity and | try under it's beneficent provision:
 from a struggling three millions or | the Atlantic coast, to a nation, con tinent wide, of 90 millions.
 .The government is not founded or the proposition that the people, 1T one expression or by one vote can. not make mistakes.
 There are those who, by a radica, change in our institutions, would force equality of conditions as we'll a.
 of opportunity They would do thi. because, curtailing in one or another
 the right of property. Those whe have studied closely the operations o1
 the past believe that next to the righ of liberty, the institution of private property is the greatest uplifter o1
 men we have had.
 Ut affords me pleasure to con graduate the state of Massachusett: on the fact that it's legislature, ever before the general sentiment to which 1 I refer was aroused in the country | had responded freely and sanely tt l the demands of the hour
 "You have recently passed what is called a Presidential primary law fo. | the election of delegates to nat1ona conventions upon which will fall the | duty of selecting the Presidential nominees of the respective parties l have not had an opportunity critically I to examine the new law but I am sure it makes proper provision tc meet the obvious requirements I an glad that you have done this. The question of how delegates are to be elected to any political convention oi how nominees are to be selected by . party was originally a matter of mere. jU ,roII1ntarV and marty adillSt mi