garded in the highest station, can hardly give much concern in lower ones; and hence we see persons appointed to offices for which they are manifestly unsuited. In any other country the whole machinery of government would be clogged, and become unmanageable. In America, the natural quickness, and peculiar adaptability to circumstances, which the people possess, enable them to sustain, and apparently without much concern, even such evils as these.

And

It would, however, be a great error to suppose that their influence, although endurable, will not be widely felt. Where the possession of minor offices of subsistence indeed-becomes, with large classes, the moving impulse, politics cease to be a question of opinion, and degenerate into a trade. With them, the question will be, not their country's good, but what they want for their own. this large class of office-holders out of place, with no other occupation than to struggle for return to it, will naturally devote an amount of time to political pursuits, which the well-employed, respectable classes cannot afford, and they will bring into play a special amount of individual eagerness; they will fill the seats of these committees, which exercise the power, nominally in the hands of the people. Men of wealth, of commercial standing, of literary tastes, are outrun by such eager rivals; and we find them, as a rule, not only indifferent to politics, but avoiding them altogether in despair.

And this tendency to convert the pursuit of politics into a profession, is largely strengthened by another cause the payment of members of the Legislature. This calls into existence a class of persons who openly make legislation their business, and live upon the income it provides. It may indeed be said, theoretically, that we are as much bound to pay men for making laws, as for making shoes. But experience tells us that the two employments require different classes of minds. A wide acquaintance with history, with jurisprudence, with social economy, an insight into the whole range of industrial pursuits,-these attainments need much more time to acquire, than those can allot to them whose time is their bread. As a rule, they can only be acquired, when the possession of property gives the command of sufficient leisure for the purpose. When it is necessary to turn time into money, we cannot expect that much of it will have been turned into legislative knowledge. It is true, indeed, that if in America all men are created equal, they may be equally fitted for all pursuits. Once granted that all men are alike, there can be no fear of putting a wrong one into any place. But when Mr. Jefferson announced that doctrine-which he exemplified by holding a number of them in bondage from their birth-he did not assert that they grew up of equal powers, or alike in knowledge; and very ample experience has proved that laws will be made best by those whom pre

vious study and habits of thought have trained in kindred pursuits.

And whilst, in the United States, the payment of members has created a class who make lawgiving a livelihood, the rate of payment is below the present standard of expenditure. There will therefore be those who have to make up this deficiency. Hence arises the well-known institution of "lobbying." Dr. Mackay, by no means a hostile witness, observes: "No one who knows anything of the internal working of American politics, will deny the fact that such members (alluding to those who live on their pay) are notoriously and avowedly open to the influences of what is called 'lobbying.' And how is it to be expected that a needy and ambitious lawyer, without practice, having nothing but his three or four dollars a day, and upon whose single vote the fortunes of a project, costing millions to carry into effect, may absolutely depend, shall not be open to the influences of those who lobby him? No disquisition on the morality or propriety of such a state of things is necessary."

The lobbies of the legislative halls are filled with a class of men called agents, whose business it is, to work private bills through Congress, or public bills, in which, like the Morrill tariff, private interests are deeply concerned, by means of influence upon members,-or, in plain terms, by some form of corruption. This is no secret matter, for indeed secrecy is little known in

American affairs; the power of the lobby is alluded to in every debate. In referring to the political corruption that exists, there is the following sentence in the Chicago Manifesto-the creed of the Northern party: "The people justly view with alarm, the reckless extravagance which pervades every department of the Federal Government; a return to rigid economy and accountability is indispensable, to arrest the systematic plunder of the public treasury by favoured partizans, whilst the recent startling developments of frauds and corruption at the Federal metropolis, show that an entire change of administration is imperatively demanded."

We think they show more than this, they show a state of disease that needs stronger remedy than a change of physicians. They show that the whole system is unsound, which produces such results. The other political party, upon whom the blame is cast, make no attempt to dispute the facts. They admit them, but trace their source to the protective system, which brings into the public treasury, a larger amount of money than the Government can expend, in any pure manner. Thus we have both the great parties in entire accordance, as to the fact of the existing political corruption. Who will dispute such competent

authorities? And if forced to admit such facts as these, they must exercise no light weight, when we are employed in forming a judgment of these institutions. Had our own Government fallen

into such a condition, we should assuredly be more inclined to embark in a struggle to end, than to maintain it.

We observed that the Constitution is by no means democratic. At the period when it was framed, the rule throughout the States was a property qualification. Although differing in the nature and amount, of the qualification, there was no State without one-practically effective-and there was no thought of abandoning the rule. The framers of the Constitution, so far from desiring to lower, or to level this, decided to leave unchanged the diversity which existed. It was held, by the ablest of them, that variety in the suffrage would provide the best representation, and afford the surest prospect of that system of check, and moderating influence, by one interest of another, which, we have seen, they regarded as a supreme excellence in the British Constitution. Here, again, we shall find that the spirit of the founders of the Republic, has been widely departed from, and departed from in this, as in every instance, with disastrous effect to the country.

other

Jefferson took no part in framing the Constitution. He expressed strong, though guarded, disapproval of it. He was in Paris, studying and imbibing the principles then coming into play, associating with the members of the future Jacobin club, cultivating the acquaintance of Thomas Paine, and filling his mind with theories, many of them springing from just emotions, but fatal in their