600 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and of every other question that threatens the slightest party division. 

 Again, questions are kept to the front that have no more vitality 

 than the dust of Caesar. Long after the civil war the issues of that 

 contest formed the stock in trade of the politicians and enabled them 

 to win many a battle that should have been fought on other grounds. 

 If need be, the grossest falsehoods are embodied in the platform, and 

 proclaimed as the most sacred tenets of party faith. 



When the campaign opens, the ethics of the platform assume a 

 more violent and reprehensible shape. Not only are its hypocrisies 

 and falsehoods repeated with endless iteration, but they are multi- 

 plied like the sands of the beach. Very few, if any, editors or orators 

 pretend to discuss questions or candidates with perfect candor and 

 honesty. Indeed, very few of them are competent to discuss them. 

 Hence sophistry and vilification take the place of knowledge and 

 reason. Were one party to adopt the Decalogue for a platform, the 

 other would find nothing in it to praise; it would be an embodiment 

 of socialism, or anarchism, or some other form of diabolism. If one 

 party were to nominate a saint, the other would paint him in colors 

 that Satan himself would hardly recognize. Not even such men as 

 Washington and Lincoln are immune to the assaults of political 

 hatred and mendacity. As the campaign draws to a close, we have a 

 rapidly increasing manifestation of all the worst traits of human 

 nature. In times of quiet, a confessed knave would scarcely be guilty 

 of them. False or garbled quotations from foreign newspapers are 

 issued. The old Cobden Club, just ready to give up the ghost, is gal- 

 vanized into the most vigorous life, and made to do valiant service 

 as a rich and powerful organization devoted to the subversion of 

 American institutions. Stories like Clay's sale of the presidency are 

 invented, and letters, like the Morey letter, are forged, and, despite 

 the most specific denials of their truth, they are given the widest cur- 

 rency. Other forms of trickery, like the Murchison letter, written 

 by the British minister during Mr. Cleveland's second campaign, are 

 devised with devilish ingenuity, and made to contribute to the press- 

 ing and patriotic work of rescuing the country from its enemies. 



But this observation of the ethics of war does not stop with the 

 close of the polls, where bribery, intimidation, and fraud are prac- 

 ticed, and the honest or dishonest count of the ballots that have been 

 cast; it is continued with the same infernal industry in the work of 

 legislation and administration. Upon the meeting of the statesmen 

 that the people have chosen under " the most perfect system of gov- 

 ernment ever devised by man," what is the first thing that arrests 

 their attention and absorbs their energies? More intriguing, bargain- 

 ing, and bribery in a hundred forms, more or less subtle, to secure 

 election and appointment to positions within the gift of the legis- 



