think it will follow that it is fruitful of other changes.

The government founded in this country was certainly intended to be the will of all the people, and the action of the best among the people. What is it now?

"It is the will of the dominant party, not the will of the people. Those of us who do not belong to the dominant party have no more voice in the Government than if we lived in France or Algiers."

I am quoting the words of the New York Times:

"We, the minority, are aliens-not in view of the law, but in view of the actual government of the country. Mr. Gladstone" (he had taken Mr. Lowe into the cabinet notwithstanding he did not follow his party in one particular) "may be of the opinion that the strength and right working of a government does not consist wholly in the number of its votes-that talent, debating power, sagacity, and high personal character still count for something, even to a government whose orthodox supporters are largely in the majority. We have got over all such obsolete ideas in this country. When a party has a large majority of votes"

(No, I say, when it has any majority of votes whatever)

-"it can do anything it likes. It needs nobody's support, and scorns to look outside its own party lines for support. All it has to do is to feed its own followers well, and see to it that not the smallest nubbin of patronage falls to anybody who is outside the party fold. In this country party is the ruling power. The government is nothing but the ruling party. Whatever aids the party aids the government. The only proper and legitimate mode of aiding the government, therefore, is to aid the party. Whatever does that is right; whatever

don't do that is all wrong. This fundamental principle of popular government has not yet penetrated the British mind. Parties in England think it worth while to conciliate the confidence and support of their opponents, as well as of their stanch supporters. The general sentiment of the country seems to them worth something

and they try to get it on their side.

* *

How can a party be expected to maintain itself, if it is to be thus cut off from the full breasts of government patronage? What encouragement have politicians to work for a party victory, if they see any slices of its rewards coolly turned over to any who doubt its right to control in all particulars? What right has any party man to a judgment or conscience of his own? What business has he to set up for himself to act upon his own convictions of duty, instead of following in the train of his party, content to obey its behests, and ask no questions?"

I am quite sure that that quotation states the nature of the practical sovereignty exercised over the American people of this day. And I am sure it is essentially a different thing from the government designed by the fathers of the country; that no hint of it is contained in the Constitution which came from their hands;

that it would be as odious a thing to them as the limited monarchy from which they rebelled. We have the form of the government which they left us, but the substance for which they designed that form to be a protection has slipped from us utterly.

Let us examine our condition a little further. There was lately sitting in Chicago a body called the National Republican Convention. It was a partisan body, called for strictly partisan purposes; and later, we had another, called a National Democratic Convention, sitting elsewhere. These are the giants which contend between them for the possession of all of us, and one of them will, in time, seize us, wriggling more or less feebly, in its unyielding grasp. One or the other of them is the body of officers of government for the next four years. They are therefore the things which tell us what we shall be for that period; what measures of government we shall treat ourselves to; who shall be our masters; how our masters shall act towards us-they are the legislatures, the judiciaries, the executives, national prosperity, individual liberty, happiness, or misery, to many among us-more than the things at national capital and State capitals, county court houses and prisons, which we delude ourselves into thinking exist independently of them by the wisdom of our fathers and our own wills.

How came these bodies to possess this power? During the first century of our national existence there was practically one great question in American politics, which overshadowed and hid all minor differences of opinion. Now and then it may have been lost sight of for a moment, but, whether they remembered it or not, it was always present in the minds and hearts of the American people. It concerned their future as a nation. There could be but two opinions on it, and there could practically, therefore, be but two parties in the government. It assumed many forms, but it always meant "disintegration or cohesion." It could not be settled but by one of the bloodiest wars of modern times. And organization perfected itself, and partisanship deepened, as the struggle approached this final result. Thus there seemed to be but two great parties possible in America, and thus they necessarily came to be rigidly exclusive. It is well to remember this, however: these nominating conventions, as the supreme hierarchy of party, sprung into existence from inherent love of liberty and devotion to constitutional forms, on the part of the American people. They were the consequence of a revolt from "King Caucus," a system of hole-and-corner nominations indulged in by high officials, to the exclusion of the general body of citizens,

contrary to the design of the Constitution and the spirit of all progress in government.

Did the revolt succeed in accomplishing its object, and are these nominating conventions a system in accord with the spirit of the Constitution? The revolt may have been successful for a time, and to a limited extent it may have lessened the power of Caucus; but he has now a surer grasp than ever, because it is partially hidden under the semblance of a representative system. And to the second part of my question I unhesitatingly answer that, however and with what purpose, good or bad, they were devised, these bodies are a clear infringement on the spirit of the Constitution. They are met ostensibly to nominate candidates for the Presidency. They offer you ultimately two men to choose from, and you must take your choice, however little you like either, or else be disfranchised. | The Constitution intended you should elect the worthiest and best men among you in your several States as an electoral college, to freely deliberate upon the special suitableness of every possible man for the particular duties of that office, and freely exercise its so matured and unbounded choice for you, as the nearest and best approach to pure representative democracy, in this regard, that could be devised for this federal republic. But these partisan conventions have stepped in, and said, "No. There shall be no choice but such as we dictate. You may utterly abhor the selections we make for you to pick from, but pick you must, or refrain from voting. Your electoral college must contain only our tools, our nominees, and in no particular must it venture to act for you, but only for us." The man nominated may be a sound Republican or Democrat, and in that particular suit your tastes; but what if the issues between those parties are of no more importance for the time being to the country than one of "ins" and "outs;" what if both parties leave out of sight, or trifle with, some question uppermost in your mind-free trade or protection, Chinese or no Chinese, civil service reform or the "spoils system"-and offer you men with no decided policy in these present important questions? In that event-not an impossible, not even an infrequent one-the true influence which your vote should have on the selection of a President is absolutely lost. Where is the value of such a franchise for such an occasion? Whereas it was intended by the electoral college system set forth in the Constitution-and I do not doubt it would have resulted, if that system had been fully developed in just accord with its true intent—that the President chosen by it would represent all of the sound, and as many of the prevailing, political opinions of the country as

it is possible for a single man to do. Not only in this particular is the operation of these partisan nominating conventions a gross departure from the spirit of the Constitution, but in another, and far more serious one. The Constitution declares that "no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector." Surely any one can see the objects of this provision without recurring to the explanatory literature on the subject, with which we are familiar. It means that the influence of high place, or of place or office of any kind, shall not sway the choice of the electoral college. It means that there shall be no cliques to snatch from the people's electors the unbounded choice; that it shall never inflexibly be limited to any oligarchy, bureaucracy, coterie, clique, or faction, holding among them, for the time being, the places of government. It means that such a prize shall be contended for by worthy striving of good men to gain the confidence of their fellow-citizens, and that all temptation or power to win it by intrigue, combination, bargain, rotation, or to the exclusion of anybody, shall be unavailing. But I say, and we all know, that, practically, these partisan conventions entirely override this purpose. "They have their birth in clique and faction of the narrowest and most exclusive sort." They are originated and controlled by the very men whom the Constitution expressly prohibits from interfering in any way with the free rights of the electors. A committee exists, calling itself, as may be, the National Republican or Democratic Committee. It is composed of "Senaators and Representatives in Congress, and persons holding places of honor or profit under the United States," or by the certain proxies of such persons. This committee is the Propaganda Fide, or the St. Petersburg or Paris Central Police Bureau, of this republic, with its inquisitors, or spies, in every quarter, prompted by narrow fanaticism, or paid by the hope of its approval, diligent in spying the political movevents the very thoughts, so far as it is possible for any police system to spy all men's thoughts in any nation. It is perpetually in existence, as well served and as well informed as the most effective continental police bureau. It has its sub-committees, called State and County Committees, composed, like itself (if the party it represents has power of any kind in State or county), of the very men whom the spirit of the Constitution expressly forbids from influencing the free electors of the people. One or another subservient tool-pettifogging, half-educated lawyer, gin-mill keeper, or fanatical partisan— in almost every township throughout the whole

the bureau. Its members may not be able to unite on one man, but they differ only on this. | They united long before the convention to forbid, or enfeeble, the consideration of any other man than the men about whom they dispute, or certain other alternates-perhaps, not literally by written agreement, but by identical spirit and purpose. If they forego their differences, and unite now on one man, it will be for "expediency." For his merit, his public worth and dignity, for their country's dignity, for his special fitness for the duties of the office? Pshaw! For the party. They are there before your eyes: "Senators and Representatives, and persons holding offices of honor and profit under the United States," with all their blushing honors thick upon them. Unsafe sights for an electoral college, thought the Fathers. Here they must be helpless? Pshaw again! They frown, and their henchmen tremble. They raise a hand, and the henchmen are silent. They wave a kerchief, and the applause lasts, at their bidding, twenty minutes by the clock. Free men, freely choosing the worthiest and best suited among us for perpetual identification with the history of our country as our chief magistrate? No!-vassals as subservient as ever followed the proudest aristocrat; and, oh, how much meaner! The whole case is summed up in two narratives to be found in the morning's paper on the close of the Chicago Convention :

A delegate from Texas, one Mr. Stenigan, is speaking in that convention against civil service reform. He wants none of it, and indignantly asks, "What are we here for but to get offices?"

General Butler is being interviewed by certain Greenbackers anent their grievance of being obliged to take gold on the rare occasions when it is offered to them, and he explains how they were injured in this way: "In 1868 the chairmen of the Republican and Democratic National Committees agreed that the bonds should be paid in gold."

The Government of the United States consists, then, in effect, of these chairmen; or, perhaps, they are merely new officers under the Constitution, charged with the guardianship of the national honor, and properly responsible only to expediency and passion!

But they do give us one among the best! Sometimes; not always. And, even if always, our right is to cast our individual votes or direct influence for whom we each consider the very best. Nothing less than this is the honest or fair exercise of our suffrage. And all this it was intended we should have. Yet it is the fact, that the men who best represented the noblest aspirations of the American people for sixty

years past never had a chance for their right place in American government—the highest in its gift. What would have been said by the Constitution writers had they been told that they were inaugurating a system which would exclude from the Presidency a Webster, a Clay, an Adams- scores of other tried men, the best in the land-and open it only to almost unknown mediocrities; and, worse than all, that the American people would regard this merely as a "curious fact?" I have heard some specious arguments for the approval of this "curious fact," but I am still guilty of the heresy of thinking that the best and most worthily prominent man in the country, to each man's thinking, should have each man's vote.

Let us consider, for a moment, the effect of these partisan aggregations on the conduct of their nominee in power. I condense a report in Mr. Stickney's recent book.*

eron.

Abraham Lincoln was as honest a man as ever filled any office. At the convention which nominated him an agreement was made between his friends and the friends of one Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, that if the Pennsylvania delegates should vote for Mr. Lincoln a seat in the cabinet should be given Mr. CamMr. Lincoln knew nothing of this agreement at that time. What followed was this: He was urged to fulfill the promise of his friends. His biographer, Colonel McClure, says he waited on him with letters from several prominent men, which "sustained me in the allegation that the appointment would disgrace the administration and the country, because of the notorious incompetency and public and private villainy of the candidate." Mr. Lincoln knew the protest to be well founded. He said, "All that I am in the world-the Presidency and all else—I owe to the opinion of me which the people express when they call me Honest Old Abe. Now, what will they think of their honest Abe when he appoints Simon Cameron to be his familiar adviser?" The appointment was made. Mr. Cameron became Secretary of War, and what might be expected followed. The most unblushing corruption was charged against him, and proved. Mr. Lincoln was, at last, compelled to summarily dismiss his secretary. And, of course, the dismissal was made in terms fitting the conduct which had been its cause? Here are its words:

"HON. SIMON CAMERON, Secretary of War