734 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of character, and it has become well known throughout the United 

 States. There are as many as a score of practitioners of psychoraetry 

 who will send a written description of the character connected with 

 any manuscripts sent them, and a number of physicians who, with 

 great success, use their psychometric power for the diagnosis of the 

 condition of patients at a distance. 



But experiments and investigations would be entirely useless if 

 Dr. Carpenter could succeed in his aim to build an impassable wall 

 for the exclusion of all essentially novel truths, by denying the com- 

 petency of scientific testimony to introduce new facts foreign to his 

 own cramped conceptions of Nature. 



To exclude the multitudinous facts of mesmerism, including the 

 vast number of surgical operations and marvelous cures in which it 

 has been employed by Dr. Esdaile, Dr. Elliotson, and hundreds of 

 others of unquestionable character to exclude the facts of spiritual- 

 ism witnessed by millions, and to combine all the incompatible powers 

 of medical and clerical bigotry now, as the Aristotelians and Romish 

 priests combined against Galileo is a task in which his success will 

 hardly equal that of Lactantius in denouncing the wicked innovations 

 which asserted tlie existence of the antipodes. 



-**^^ 



T 



THE DECLINE OF PAKTY GOVEKNMENT. 



By Professor GOLDWIN SMITH. 



HE late presidential election appears likely, in its results, to 



mark an epoch not only in the political history of the United 



States, but in that of all constitutional countries. In the person of 

 the new President the American Government has come out of party 

 and is trying to be the government of the whole nation. Sir Robert 

 Peel tried the same thing in England, though in his case the " splen- 

 did perfidy" to party was less marked than in the case of Governor 

 Hayes, because the repeal of the corn laws was not more essential to 

 the interest of the country, which it rescued from death, than it was 

 to that of the Conservative party, which it rescued from hopeless 

 opposition to the nation and from utter political ruin. Party found a 

 dagger with which to stab Sir Robert Peel. President Hayes has 

 shown himself a strong man, but the greatest trials of his strength 

 are still to come. AVhen Congress meets he will have to contend both 

 with the resentment of the regular managers of his own party and 

 with the hostility of the thorough-going Democrats, who will see 

 their opportunity in the breach between the President and the party 

 which raised him to power, as the Whigs in 1846 saw their opportu- 

 nity in the breach between Sir Robert Peel and the Protectionist sec- 

 tion of his followers. Supposing, however, that President Hayes, like 



