State Legislation 81 



that he was actually an ardent prohibitionist: cer- 

 tainly no one who knows Teutonic human nature 

 will require further proof. Again, I sat for an en- 

 tire session beside a very intelligent member from 

 northern New York before I discovered that he was 

 an Irishman : all his views of legislation, even upon 

 such subjects as free schools and the impropriety 

 of making appropriations from the treasury for the 

 support of sectarian institutions, were precisely sim- 

 ilar to those of his Protestant-American neighbors, 

 though he was himself a Catholic. Now a German 

 or an Irishman from one of the great cities would 

 probably have retained many of his national pe- 

 culiarities. 



It is from these same great cities that the worst 

 legislators come. It is true that there are always 

 among them a few cultivated and scholarly men 

 who are well educated, and who stand on a higher 

 and broader intellectual and moral plane than the 

 country members, but the bulk are very low indeed. 

 They are usually foreigners of little or no edu- 

 cation, with exceedingly misty ideas as to morality, 

 and possessed of an ignorance so profound that it 

 could only be called comic, were it not for the fact 

 that it has at times such serious effects upon our 

 laws. It is their ignorance, quite as much as actual 

 viciousness, which makes it so difficult to procure 

 the passage of good laws or prevent the passage of 

 bad ones ; and it is the most irritating of the many 

 elements with which we have to contend in the fight 

 for good government. 



