536 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



futility of these various remedial measures, 

 and sums up that there is no hope in themi 

 as follows : 



But these and many other various explana- 

 tions and remedies for our evil case, thathave 

 been heretofore offered to the anxious inquiries 

 of the people, hardly deserve so much attention. 

 The explanations are incompetent and the rem- 

 edies nugatory. He who expects to see states- 

 manship aud fidelity to the public interests re- 

 stored in city. State, or nation by civil-service 

 reform, the restraint of special legislation, long 

 presidential terms or short; a nev/ settlement 

 of functions among aldermen, commissioners, 

 and mayors; the election or the appointment of 

 judges; closer investigations or severer punish- 

 ments ; an educational test, a religious test, or a 

 property test ; or any other the like petty and 

 partial devices, would expect to cure the yellow 

 fever by changing a man's shirt. 



This is strongly put, but we are inclined 

 to think that the author is a good deal more 

 than half right. 



Dr. Clark thus discredits all the nostrums 

 offered by the political doctors to cure the 

 diseases of the body politic ; but to what 

 end ? Not to confirm the conclusion, made 

 infinitely probable by his own sweeping logic, 

 that the case is not one to be cured by nos- 

 trums at all ; but, strange to say, the other 

 political medicine-men are dismissed, that 

 our doctor may try a new nostrum of his 

 own. His panacea may be effectual — it 

 has not been tried — but we are sorry to 

 note that it is put upon the usual quackish 

 ground at the outset. Every sovereign cure 

 assumes unity of cause in all diseases — 

 "all maladies come from impurity of the 

 blood, you know; here is something to pu- 

 rify the blood." Dr. Clark says, " The po- 

 litical rot in all the larger spheres of gov- 

 ernment is identical and pervading; it 

 must own some single cause as dominating 

 as gravity itself; and it must find a single 

 cure." 



The true root of our pohtical difficulties 

 is assumed to be the present organization of 

 politics, represented chiefly by the caucus 

 system, the result of which is, that " at the 

 dictate of leaders whom we have not chosen, 

 we vote for candidates whom we do not know, 

 to discharge duiies that loe can not under- 

 stand." The remedy proposed is embodied in 

 the proposition that popular elections work 

 well in small and ill in large constituencies. 

 The general purity of town and village poli- 

 tics is contrasted with the general corrup 



tion of municipal, State, and national poli- 

 tics, and the cause of this is alleged to be 

 that, in the former case, the citizen knows 

 who and what he is voting for, while in the 

 latter case he knows little or nothing of 

 either. There is therefore required a new 

 method of elections — a reconstruction of the 

 commonwealth by which the voter shall 

 commit to competent men, whom he knows, 

 the function of appointing all higher officials 

 in the larger spheres of political action. 

 The sovereign citizen is, in fact, to recog- 

 nize his incompetency to deal with general 

 politics, to abdicate his vote, on State and 

 national questions, and choose those whom 

 he thinks better able to do all this business 

 for him. Dr. Clark does not propose to 

 dispense with caucus and organization, but 

 that the people shall take them out of the 

 hands of the politician and operate them 

 themselves. He says : 



The people must turn over the prerogative 

 of choosing Governors and Legislatures, now 

 nominally exercised at the ballot-box, to repre- 

 sentative delegates. In the business of all large 

 constituencies, the caucus and convention must 

 be substituted for the polls. Thus only can 

 the function of the voter be accommodated to his 

 Intelligence; and thus only, the shadow of power 

 discarded, can we secure its substance. 



For the details of his plan, the interested 

 reader must be referred to Dr. Clark's work, 

 where they are fully elaborated. Looking 

 into it with some care, we have much the 

 same opinion of it that its author very 

 plainly expresses of other devices for the 

 renovation of our politics and the salvation 

 of the country. None the less we heartily 

 commend his book to political readers, who 

 will find much in it worthy of serious con- 

 sideration. 



Researches into the Early History of 

 Mankind and the Development of 

 Civilization. By Edward B. Tylor, 

 D. C. L., LL. D., r. R. S. New York : 

 Henry Holt & Co. IS'ZS. Pp. 388. 

 Price, $3.50. 



This volume consists of a series of some- 

 what miscellaneous essays bearing upon the 

 early history of man. In the view of the au- 

 thor, while there are great masses of mate- 

 rials already at hand for working out the 

 subject, the time for writing a systematic 

 treatise does not yet seem to have come. 

 For civilization, being a process of long and 



