EDITOR'S TABLE. 



553 



true crux and crisis of modern re- 

 publican institutions. Strictly speak- 

 ing, the power that has been wrested 

 from the moDarch ought to be ap- 

 plied, as a good monarch would ap- 

 ply it, to the benefit of the state as a 

 whole ; but how is it really applied ? 

 Here it is, as we conceive, that 

 there is room for a teaching, to 

 speak plainly, of far greater value 

 and importance than that which the 

 law prescribes in the interest of 

 ''temperance" ; the teaching, to wit, 

 that political jjower can be as niuch 

 abused, and in multitudes of cases 

 is as much abused, by the individ- 

 ual citizen as by any autocrat that 

 ever lived. What can the autocrat 

 do worse than use the power which 

 he has grasped, or which has de- 

 scended to him, for personal pur- 

 poses instead of for public purposes ? 

 It is true he uses a great deal of 

 power, and thus is in the w^ay of 

 doing a great deal of harm ; but in 

 essence he does no worse than the 

 citizen who sells his vote or makes 

 any use of it other than that which 

 consideration of the public good 

 would prescribe. The individual 

 citizen wields but a fractional part of 

 the i)ower of the autocrat ; but the 

 part he wields does not belong to 

 him as his personal property ; and, 

 if he uses it as such, he is simply a 

 tyrant on a small scale, or, say, a 

 fractional tyrant instead of an inte- 

 gral one. He is doing with his little 

 bit of power just what the other man 

 did with his vast and concentrated 

 power. In fact, he is doing worse, 

 because if he abuses his vote and in- 

 fluence he abuses all he possesses, 

 whereas no autocrat was ever yet so 

 bad that part of his power was not 

 exercised for the public good. Tibe- 

 rius and Nero were execrable men, 

 but many of their public acts were 

 directed to the good of the state. 

 The idea, therefore, which it is im- 

 portant to get into the mind of the 



young is that ihe irresponsible voter 

 is a tyrant : he is diverting to private 

 purposes a measure of political power 

 which only belongs to him for pub- 

 lic purposes. 



Then, just as in "temperance" 

 education the evils of intemperance 

 are vividly set forth with many a 

 livelj' excursus on the evils of even 

 the most moderate use of stimulants 

 so it would be perfectly proper to 

 exhibit in detail the baseness of a 

 system of politics in which private 

 interest takes the place of public duty. 

 The case is more urgent by far, in 

 our opinion, than the case for "tem- 

 perance" instruction for this reason, 

 that there is already a vast body of 

 sentiment in the country favorable 

 to temperance and even to total ab- 

 stinence; whereas there can not be 

 said to be any vast body of sentiment 

 favorable to pure, honest, and disin- 

 terested politics. Every man occu- 

 pying an important political posi- 

 tion knows the kind of solicitations 

 he receives for all sorts of things 

 possible and impossible. He knows 

 how often he is assured that unless 

 certain offices, contracts, etc., are 

 disposed of in a certain way there is 

 no earthly chance of his party suc- 

 ceeding in the next contest in con- 

 gressional district so-and-so. Every 

 such man knows also that it is not 

 only from the ignorant and socially 

 inferior that such communications 

 proceed that, on the contrary, men 

 of substance and reputation are their 

 autliors in perhaps the majority of 

 cases. The assumption may be said 

 to be almost universal that a man's 

 vote is his own, and that in casting 

 it he has nothing to consider but his 

 own interest. That it is disgraceful 

 to withdraw support from a party in 

 which a man professes to have con- 

 fidence and give it to one in which 

 he professes to have no confidence, 

 simply because some petty contract 

 job or office is not disposed of to his 



