EDITOR'S TABLE. 



271 



little resemblance to that contemplated at 

 the outset of your political life. Manifestly, 

 those who framed your constitution never 

 dreamed that twenty thousand citizens would 

 go to the poll led by a " boss." America 

 exemplifies, at the other end of the social 

 scale, a change analogous to that which has 

 taken place under sundry despotisms. You 

 know that in Japan, before the recent revo- 

 lution, the divine ruler, the Mikado, nomi- 

 nally supreme, was practically a puppet in 

 the hands of his chief minister, the Shogun. 

 Here it seems to me that the " sovereign 

 people " is fast becoming a puppet which 

 moves and speaks as wire-pullers determine. 



Then you think that republican institu- 

 tions are a failure ? 



By no means ! I imply no such con- 

 clusion. Thirty years ago, when often dis- 

 cussing politics with an English friend, and 

 defending republican institutions, as I al- 

 ways have done and do still ; and when he 

 urged against me the ill-working of such 

 institutions over here ; I habitually replied 

 that the Americans got their form of gov- 

 ernment by a happy accident, not by nor- 

 mal progress, and that they would have to 

 go back before they could go forward. 

 What has since happened seems to me to 

 have justified that view; and what I see 

 now confirms me in it. America is show- 

 ing on a larger scale than ever before, that 

 " paper constitutions " will not work as they 

 are intended to work. The truth, first rec- 

 ognized by Mackintosh, that " constitutions 

 are not made, but grow," which is part of 

 the larger truth that societies throughout 

 their whole organizations are not made but 

 grow, at once, when accepted, disposes of 

 the notion that you can work, as you hope, 

 any artificially-devised system of govern- 

 ment. It becomes an inference that if your 

 political structure has been manufactured, 

 and not grown.it will forthwith begin to 

 grow into something different from that 

 intended something in harmony with the 

 natures of citizens and the conditions un- 

 der which the society exists. And it evi- 

 dently has been so with you. Within the 

 forms of your constitution there has grown 

 up this organization of professional poli- 

 ticians, altogether uncontemplated at the 

 outset, which has become in large measure 

 the ruling power. 



But will not education and the diffusion ot 

 political knowledge fit men for free institu- 

 tions ? 



No. It is essentially a question of 

 character, and only in a secondary degree 

 a question of knowledge. But for the uni- 

 versal delusion about education as a pana- 

 cea for political evils, this would have been 

 made sufficiently clear by the evidence 

 daily disclosed in your papers. Are not the 

 men who officer and control your Federal, 

 State, and municipal organizations who 

 manipulate your caucuses and conventions, 

 and run your partisan campaigns all edu- 

 cated men? and has their education pre- 

 vented them from engaging in, or permit- 

 ting, or condoning, the briberies, lobbyings, 

 and other corrupt methods which vitiate 

 the actions of your administrations ? Per- 

 haps party newspapers exaggerate these 

 things ; but what am I to make of the tes- 

 timony of your civil-service reformers men 

 of all parties ? If I understand the matter 

 aright, they are attacking, as vicious and 

 dangerous, a system which has grown up 

 under the natural spontaneous working of 

 your free institutions are exposing vices 

 which education has proved powerless to 

 prevent. 



Of course, ambitious and unscrupulous 

 men will secure the offices, and education 

 will aid them in their selfish purposes ; but 

 would not those purposes be thwarted, and 

 better government secured, by raising the 

 standard of knowledge among the people at 

 large ? 



Very little. The current theory is that 

 if the young are taught what is right, and 

 the reasons why it is right, they will do 

 what is right when they grow up. But, 

 considering what religious teachers have 

 been doing these two thousand years, it 

 seems to me that all history is against the 

 conclusion, as much as is the conduct of these 

 well-educated citizens I have referred to ; 

 and I do not see why you expect better re- 

 sults among the masses. Personal interests 

 will sway the men in the ranks as they 

 sway the men above them ; and the educa- 

 tion which fails to make the last consult 

 public good rather than private good, will 

 fail to make the first do it. The benefits of 

 political purity are so general and remote, 

 and the profit to each individual so incon- 



