Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/258

216 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS In this speech Governor Wilson contended that representative government is nothing more nor less than an effort to give voice to the great, struggling body of the masses the learned and the fortunate, as well as the uneducated through spokesmen chosen out of every grade and class. He declared it to be a fact which it would be dangerous to ignore that, "We stand in the presence of an awakened nation awake to the knowledge that she has lost certain cherished liberties and has wasted priceless resources which she had solemnly under taken to hold in trust for posterity and for all man kind; and she stands confronted with an occasion for constructive statesmanship such as has not arisen since the days in which the Government was set up." . . . "We are servants of the people, the whole people. The Nation has been unnecessarily, unreasonably at war within itself. Interest has clashed with interest when there were common prin ciples of right and of fair dealing which might and should have bound them all together, not as rivals, but as partners. As the servants of all, we are bound to undertake the great duty of accommoda tion and adjustment." The Nominee was outspoken in his conviction that the tariff should be revised. Said he : "Tariff duties, as they have employed them, have not been a means of setting up an equitable system of protection. They have been, on the contrary,