THE CONSERVATIVE REFORMER 179 



results in the sway of demagogues who marshal at the 

 polls their hordes of bribed or petted followers. This 

 is no doubt very bad. It is a serious danger against 

 which we must provide. But do these objectors ever 

 stop to think how much worse it would be if the 

 demagogue, instead of marshalling his creatures at 

 the polls, were able to stand up and inflame their pas- 

 sions with the cry that in this country they have no 

 vote, no share in making the laws, that they are kept 

 out of their just dues by an upper class of rich men 

 who can make the laws ? If your hod-carrier was 

 sulking for the want of a vote, he would be ten times 

 more dangerous than any so-called friend of labour 

 can now make him. As it is, his vote does not teach 

 him much, because of his dull mind and narrow experi- 

 ence, but after all, it gives him the feeling that he is of 

 some account in the world, that his individuality is to 

 some extent respected; and this is unquestionably one 

 of the most powerful and conservative safeguards of 

 American civilization. In point of fact, our political 

 freedom and our social welfare are to-day in infinitely 

 greater peril from Pennsylvania's iron-masters and the 

 owners of silver mines in Nevada than from all the 

 ignorant foreigners that have flocked to us from 

 Europe. Our legacy of danger for this generation 

 was bequeathed us by Hamilton, not by Jefferson. 



The American people took Jefferson into their 

 hearts as they have never taken any other statesman 

 until Lincoln in these latter days. His influence en- 

 dured in his green old age at Monticello, the favoured 

 spot where in the early days, when American inde- 

 pendence had hardly been thought of, he used to sit 

 under the trees with his brilliant young friend and 



