Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/226

186 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS authorizing the United States government, should it choose, to appoint collectors of taxes, and con ceding such terms as would justify American pro tection to those collectors in case of rebellion. The friendship between Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt had been so manifest throughout the lat- ter s presidency, and Mr. Roosevelt had taken so large a part in making Mr. Taft his successor, that there was a general disposition to forecast Mr. Taft s administration as virtually a continuation of Mr. Roosevelt s. To dispel this impression, and to relieve himself of importunities to which he feared he would be subject, Mr. Roose velt went abroad as soon as possible after Mr. Taft s inauguration, and on his return in the summer of 1910 announced his intention of keeping aloof from politics for the present. The menace of republican disaster in the elections of that fall, however, and the solicitations of some of his old associates in public life, overcame his resolu tion, and he entered the campaign with char acteristic vigor, trying to check the adverse drift, but to little purpose. Reading in the result at the polls a notice that Mr. Taft could not hope for reelection, several western republican leaders urged Mr. Roosevelt to allow them to make him their candidate for a third term of the presidency. He discouraged such a movement, and for a while seemed to have suppressed it. But early in 1912