Methods of Reform. 
287 
I believe our legislators ready and willing to lead in this 
good reform, but if they are not then I hope that a rising tide 
of public opinion will induce them to legislate better than they 
wish, and in the well known words of Fernando Wood will per¬ 
suade them “ to pander a little to the moral sense of the com¬ 
munity. ” We must say of the system of modern corruption as 
Lord Chatham, the noble defender of the infant liberties of this 
country, said of the rotten borough system of England: “ If it 
does not drop it must be amputated. ” 
It behooves all poor men, and most men are poor; it behooves 
all honest men, and most men are honest, to see to it that the 
buying and selling of offices be effectually provided against, 
and to maintain what Jefferson in his first inaugural called a 
jealous care of the right of election by the people. 
That reform which England has in the past twelve years so 
well achieved against customs of corruption more wide and deep 
than any we have to meet, in the next twelve months, now that 
some of the sisterhood have nobly led the way, all the states 
of our union should nobly accomplish. They have seen these 
new laws turning the light into the dark places of politics, and 
as on that first day God saw the light that it was good, so will 
they. They cannot and they dare not deny to all our people 
those guaranties for the tranquility, purity and freedom of elec¬ 
tions already assured to Englishmen. It was the profane and 
shameless jest of an Irish Judas that he thanked God that he 
had a country to sell. The venal voter, though he boasts less 
loudly, betrays as basely. 
The law of the land must see to it that the corrupt rich dare 
not buy, and the degraded poor dare not sell, the honor and 
safety of the state; and public opinion, stronger and more far 
reaching than any statute, higher and better than any enact¬ 
ment, but aided and enforced by adequate laws, must teach every 
voter in the land to say, with our good Quaker poet as he takes 
his ballot at the polls: 
“ The wide world has not wealth to buy 
The power in my right hand. ” 
Madison , Wis. 
