ABSTRACT
Elihu Root was regarded by his American contemporaries at the beginning of the twentieth century as an extraordinarily able and thoughtful statesman. Root left the cabinet in 1904, but returned in 1905 as Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of State. Root's understanding of individual liberty and the role of government in modern society cannot be described as simple-minded, laissez-faire individualism, however. To be sure, in everything he wrote and did, he took his bearings from the notion that "the individual citizen has certain inalienable rights - the right to life, to liberty, to the pursuit of happiness". There was no doubt about what was "new" in the rest of the Roosevelt program outlined in the "Charter" speech, however. Root emphatically believed - as did Roosevelt - in popular government, but he appreciated - as Roosevelt did not - the profoundly problematic character of democracy.
