THE MACHINERY OF ELECTIVE GOVERNMENT. 645 



their own safety, if not by any more generous motive, to "educate 

 their masters." If they knew their own moral interest, they would 

 prefer this necessity for exertion to the torpid security afforded by 

 what is called a strong government to wealth and pleasure. After all 

 there will be risks, great risks, in popular institutions ; but, as expe- 

 rience shows, nothing like so great as those which attend arbitrary 

 power. At all events, feeble barriers merely chafe the popular flood ; 

 the only chance of safety lies in frankly embracing the democratic 

 principle and framing securities for the ascendency of public reason 

 over cupidity and passion, not in the interest of an upper class, but in 

 that of the whole community. 



There is a wide difference between the case of political and that 

 of municipal suffrage. This is a point of the highest importance in 

 America, where the cities are vexed and pillaged by a brood of mu- 

 nicipal demagogues, such as the late Mr. William Tweed. Legis- 

 latures, in regulating the municipal suffrage, have forgotten the great 

 change which the cities have undergone. In the middle ages they 

 had a political life of their own, and as the antagonists of the rural 

 aristocracy played a distinct part in political development. This be- 

 longs to the past ; a city is now little more than a densely peopled 

 district requiring a special administration. Moreover, the great mer- 

 chants who were the leaders and magistrates of the cities in former 

 days do not now live in them, but in villas outside them, nor do they 

 seek city offices ; the guilds are dead ; the people, even in the same 

 street, know little or nothing of each other. All unity is gone ; there 

 is only a human sand-heap, among the grains of which moves with 

 sinister activity the ward politician. The chief, almost the only func- 

 tion of a city government in these days, is to raise and expend money ; 

 in equity and reason, therefore, the franchise ought to be in some 

 measure proportioned to the amount of the contribution ; it ought to 

 follow the rule of joint-stock companies, rather than that of political 

 communities, in which the poorest man's rights and liberties are of as 

 much value as those of the richest. Nor is the present system in any 

 way favorable to the poor, who are led by the petty bribes offered them 

 by sharpers or rings, and by appeals to their class passions to vote 

 for public plunder. The money goes into the pockets of the Tweeds ; 

 and nowhere are the health and comfort of the poorer citizens less cared 

 for than in cities which are under the government of these rogues. A 

 strong, permanent, pure, and enlightened administration, of a thorough- 

 ly business and scientific character, is what is needed by the people of 

 every city, and by the inhabitants of the poorest quarters most of all. 



Of the question of female suffrage the writer has spoken else- 

 where.* The spheres of the two sexes, as he believes, are, like their 



* In an article in " Macmillan's Magazine," which at the request of some members of 

 the House of Commons was reprinted, and was circulated by them among the members 

 of the House. 



