weak government. Union have aggravated this inherent weakness, by excluding the presence of rival or competitor. Had two Republics existed from the first, each would have constrained the other, in self-defence, to maintain a really efficient government. In place of this there has been an entire absence of power, or control, or influence over the people, in their social or domestic politics; in other words, in all matters on which the purity and health of the body politic depend. In these respects the Federal Government has beheld the States diverging more and more widely from the original standard,-powerless to avert it. The Union excluded efficiency of government when it excluded all competition with itself.

The circumstances of the

Of this general inefficiency in administration there is a striking proof in Lynch law. An occurrence of this kind on some rare occasion would invite no comment; but it does invite serious reflection to find it tacitly understood throughout the country, that all have a right to resort to it when they consider the occasion to require it. Punishment is hardly attempted, if at all; for where such sentiments exist, it is clear that no jury will convict. Thus practically, whenever the popular will may choose to take the law into its own hands, it is silently permitted to do so. This practice appears to be the more prevalent in the South, mainly because occasions to invite it are much more rare in the North. No long time has

elapsed since the Erie Railway was attacked by the mayor of a town and his officials, the rails torn up, and serious damage perpetrated, as a mode of persuading the directors to make another station. Nor is it long since some of the people of New York, interested in property on Staten Island, destroyed the hospital there, spreading out the patients on the ground. It was desirable to them that it should be removed, and they did not consider it necessary to await the slow process of petition or argument.

Another proof of the unhealthy state into which the administration of the law has fallen, will be found in "Vigilance Committees." When the Rowdy class become too boisterous, or kill some one who is held in special regard, public opinion, which commonly regards them as a rough but excusable product of the soil, becomes indignant, and rouses itself to action. Men of substance, knowing that the laws are powerless, form themselves into a vigilance committee, and make a resolute assault on the strongholds of ruffianism. They are always successful, and for a time the atmosphere is cleared. Thus the interests of society have to be vindicated by force, and at the risk of life, because the execution of the laws is too feeble or corrupt, or the hordes of criminals are too powerful to be dealt with in any other

manner.

It would appear, indeed, that the real object of popular respect in the United States, is not law,

but force. Uncontrollable force in the peopledespotic force in party-unlicensed force in Lynch law-indignant force in vigilant committeesdaring force in individual outrage-vigorous force, however employed, at once awakens latent sympathy, or commands intuitive respect. If this be kept in view it will explain occurrences that otherwise are incomprehensible. It may be that the sentiment grows naturally out of the theory of the sovereignty of the people-a power there can be nothing to control. What, indeed, is really the basis of extreme democracy, except brute force ? But be its origin what it may, there can be little doubt as to its effect on reverence for law, or its danger to the permanence of institutions. The most popular of Presidents was Jackson, the nearest impersonation of it. Probably the most popular with the mass, at a future day, will be the Louis Napoleon whom universal suffrage will eventually produce, and this without the apology that exists in the magic of that name.

It may be argued that many of the evils referred to exist only in part of the country, and that we should not permit the impressions they create to be applied to the whole. It is, indeed, one of the difficulties arising from the magnitude of the Union, that no description can be drawn that will apply justly to every part of it. There are portions of the United States, and especially New England, which in every moral attribute will compare advantageously with any district of any

country in Europe, and perhaps in some respects may not be equalled. But in judging of the Union as a whole, it would be as erroneous to take New England as a standard, as to take Utah, with its detestable practices of Mormonism. It is a great copartnership, in which we cannot relieve the worthy from their responsibility for the acts of all. The only means of forming a judgment of the whole, as a whole, is by searching out those sentiments which, though they may be illustrated by local occurrences, appear to pervade the great mass of the community, and more especially that portion of it in which the active political power resides.

6

An American writer observes: "Never had country better laws than ours; and in the main, at any rate, the judges are upright and correct: but the true trouble is that the people are corrupt. The maxim of All's fair in politics,' operating upon a population relaxed by an overwhelming prosperity, and cursed with a preternatural sharpness, has debauched the morality of the whole nation. The jury system was devised in a country where the people were less fast than here. It was founded on the theory that the community was pure. That the basis of this theory is gone, so far as this country is concerned, it needs no argument from us to urge. So long as the rulers only of a people are dishonest, liberty is safe; but what is to become of a nation, the people of which are corrupt?" The phrase here used, and generally

acted upon in the country, "All's fair in politics," throws a light on what is undoubtedly the greatest evil of the Union-a laxity of political morals that pervades public life. We have observed that the Unionist has two different sets of principles: those which guide him in private life as a man-precisely the same, speaking generally, as in other countries; and those which the same person will adopt, although in direct opposition to the former, when embarked in public affairs.

The causes of this may, to some extent, be traced to the complexities of the Union. It exists upon a series of compromises, and where, as in this case, such compromises involve great moral questions of right and wrong, there must be a laxity of principle at the very root of the system. This has been greatly increased by the political necessities of the Union. The Americans, of what may be termed the respectable class, are divided, as in other countries, into two great parties. There is a third, the lower class, largely composed of foreign elements, which gives a decisive majority to either of the two with which it may unite. Hence has arisen that flattery of the mob, so humiliating to the dignity of public men, and which, when developed in legislation, has so perverted the spirit of the Constitution, and lowered public opinion from its original standard. The politicians of the South, in order, as we shall see, to maintain their position against the superior numbers of the North, have long allied themselves