State Convention— Republican-Democracy, i 75 
means, and entirely selfish in their action. Bribery and corrup¬ 
tion are their custom, when dealing with the governments; extor- 
ton and brutality mark their conduct toward private persons. 
They lavish their ill-gotten wealth, with a varied taste, on horses, 
harlots and the theological seminaries. They enrich their confid¬ 
ing constituences of stock holders with “ watered stock,” and 
plunder them again in the guise of “legal services.” They wan¬ 
tonly disregard even the time-honored precept of “ honor among 
thieves.” and turn traitors to one another, if it will only pay. 
Well may we say, with Geo. P. Marsh, our present minister to 
Italy, that “ the example of American states shows that private 
corporations—whose rule of action is the interest of the associa¬ 
tion, not the conscience of the individual—though composed of 
ultra democratic elements, may become most dangerous enemies 
to rational liberty, to the moral interest of the commonwealth, to 
the purity of legislation, and of judicial action, and to the sacred¬ 
ness of private rights.” 
Pailway corruption exists and is regarded with apprehension in 
other countries than our own. But the negligence, that permits 
all kinds of corporate schemes to get on foot without duly guard¬ 
ing the rights of the citizen, has intensified this evil in the United 
States. We find ourselves now, face to face with a dangerous 
corporate power, created to subserve the interests of the people, 
but used to inordinately enrich a few, at the expense of the many. 
There can be but one result. It is not in the nature of republican- 
democracy—the spirit of our age and country will not permit this 
base invasion of our rights as citizens and States. The railways 
of the country must be made in practice what they virtually 
should be—public highways—on which law, and not extortionate 
or capricious managers shall fix the tolls, and our railway mag¬ 
nates made to understand that the government of State and Nation 
is to be run in the interest of the people. Solus Populi Supremct 
lex. 
And even as to other forms of incorporated capital, I incline 
to the opinion that we have made a mistake in giving special 
privileges of any kind in the shape of pecuniary corporations. 
They are not working out good results. They give undue advan¬ 
tages to those who hold them over those who do not; and the 
