Methods of Reform. 
263 
amend any especial wrong, are more efficient and salutary 
and their results more permanent when they are a part and 
culmination of a large movement and when needed preliminary 
reforms have been accomplished. 
The foundation must be looked to by the law maker as well 
as the house builder. 
I take up Political Corruption in Politics and Laws for its 
Prevention now because I believe it timely. 
It has for fourteen years past greatly engaged the wise at¬ 
tention of English law makers, and during the past three years 
many bills have been offered, some excellent laws passed and 
much public discussion evoked on the subject in our own country. 
The passage of ballot laws of the Australian type in many 
of our states has greatly reduced the old interference with the 
freedom of voting and made the buying of votes less satisfactory. 
It has moreover made the printing of the ballots a public 
charge and justly relieved candidates not only from the actual 
cost, but from the far more onerous constructive cost, of printing 
and distributing the ballots. This was the old plea under which 
heelers and committee-men of every rank bled the candidate’s 
pocket and the candidate’s friends, but our present law leaves 
the custom as obsolete as a last year’s athlete. Many who 
have always a specious pretext for smothering reform, urge 
that nothing more is needed; that no man will buy votes under 
a system which prevents him from seeing them delivered. But 
that there is honor among thieves is proverbial, and in England, 
where the ballot is traced by a counter foil, in case of fraud or 
bribery, it is found that, even under an Australian law, the 
vote generally follows the bribe. 
The natural supplement to ballot reform has proved in Great 
Britain and in several of our states a Corrupt Practice act. 
“The two great natural and historical enemies of all republics,” 
says Mr. Justice Miller, perhaps the ablest jurist who has in 
recent years served on our Federal Supreme bench, “are open 
violence and insidious corruption, ” and in the order in which the 
judge names them they menace the freedom and purity of the 
ballot, the chief support of republics. 
At first men take their meat with spear and bow, later they 
