A PLEA FOR THE INTRODUCTION 
 
 RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 
 
 V. ^ 
 
 AND THE 
 
 REPRESENTATION OF CAPITAL 
 
 INTO THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 AS SAFEGUARDS AGAINST 
 
 COMMUNISM I DISUNION. 
 
 EXTRACT FROM DBTOOQUKVIU.K'S "DKMOCKACV IX AMKKKA." 
 
 " In iliat immense crowd which throngs the avenues to power in the United States, I found very 
 few men who displayed that manly candor and masculine independence of opinion which 
 irequently distinguished the Americans In former times, and which constitutes the leading 
 feature in distinguished characters wheresoever they may be found. It seems at t: 
 as if all the minds of the Americans were formed upon one model, so accurately do 
 low the same rout' . does indeed sometimes meet with Americans wh 
 
 from the rigor of these formularies, with men who deplore the effects of the laws, the mu- 
 tability and the ignorance of democracy who even go so far as to observe tl-c evil tendencies 
 which impair the national rharx-ter and to point out such remedies as it might ba 
 to apply, b a t they hold a different language in public." 
 
 By VAN BUREX DEXSLOW, LL D, 
 
 Late Associate Editor of the New York and Chicago Tribunes, Professor of Law- in the Union 
 College of Law, and of Political Economy in the University of Chic . 
 
 riUNTKI* FOK THE ATTHOR, 
 ]5Y .I.VO. C. HlKiHKs, SVKIN-fiKIELt), ILL. 
 
 1879.
 
 A PLEA FOR THE INTRODUCTION 
 
 OF 
 
 ESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 
 
 AND THE 
 
 REPRESENTATION OF CAPITAL 
 
 INTO THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 AS SAFEGUARDS AGAINST 
 
 COMMUNISM I DISUNION. 
 
 EXTRACT FROM DKTOOQUEVII.LE'S " DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA." 
 
 ' In that immense crowd which throngs the avenues to power in the United States, I found very 
 few men who displayed that manly candof and masculine independence of opinion which 
 frequently distinguished the Americans in former times, and which constitutes the leading 
 feature in distinguished characters wheresoever they may be found. It seems at first sight 
 as if all the minds of the Americans were formed upon one model, so accurately do they fol- 
 low the same route. A stranger does indeed sometimes meet with Americans who dissent 
 from the rigor of these formularies, with men who deplore the effects of the laws, the mu- 
 tability and the ignorance of democracy who even go so far as to observe the evil tendencies 
 which impair the national character and to point out such remedies as it might be possible 
 to apply, but they hold a different language in public." 
 
 By VAN BUREN DENSLOW, LI. D., 
 
 Late Associate Editor of the New York and Chicago Tribunes, Professor of Law in the Union 
 College of Law, and of Political Economy in the University of Chicago. 
 
 PRINTED POU THE AUTHOR, 
 
 BY Jxo. C. HUOHRS, SruixoFiELU, ILL. 
 1879.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by 
 
 VAN BUREN DENSLOW, 
 In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 JNO. C. HUGHES, H. W. ROKKER, 
 
 STEREOTYPER, PRINTER AND BINDER, 
 
 Springfield, 111.
 
 RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 1. OUR LACK OP IT ix THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 
 
 AND HOW IT MAY BE SUPPLIED. 
 
 IF any practical English or American statesman were asked to-day to point 
 out the chief difference between the Constitution of England and that of 
 the United States, he would probably say that it consists in the fact that in 
 the United States, and in each of them, the executive branch of the govern- 
 ment is elected for a fixed term of office, and during that term is independent 
 of the legislative branch; while in England the real executive branch of the 
 government, to-wit: the cabinet, is elected for no fixed term, and resigns either 
 upon an adverse vote of the House of Commons, or if it calls for a popular elec- 
 tion to test the stability of the existing House of Commons, and is beaten at the 
 polls, then it resigns in obedience to an adverse vote of the people. In this 
 respect, the English executive regarding the Queen or King, of course, as a 
 figurehead, is flexible, and may be changed in a day, or, at most, in a month; 
 while, the American executive is inflexible, and when once elected, can not, 
 except by impeachment for high crimes or misdemeanors, be changed in less 
 than four years. Our legislatures, also, are inflexible, whether they represent 
 faithfully the will of the people or not; while the English, Canadian and 
 Australian legislatures are more flexible, since it is in the power of the execu- 
 tive in each of those countries to dissolve the legislature at any moment, and 
 test, by a new election, whether the people sustain the administration, or 
 whether they sustain the opposition legislative majority. Thus, in England, 
 Canada and Australia the people are permitted to vote (in all important cases 
 over which there is sufficient difference of opinions to divide parties) upon the 
 very question on which their legislature is to act, and in time to control its 
 action. 
 
 In America (except in certain cases wherein, by State legislation, a given 
 question is submitted to popular vote) the people, in political campaign*, 
 can not vote in a manner to affect any question of future action, but must 
 
 NOTE. The substance of the above Chapter 1 was delivered as a lecture 
 before the Philosophical Society of Chicago, on November 11, 1876.
 
 4 Responsible Government. 
 
 simply vote an indorsement of one or the other of two sets of party candidates, 
 and with reference to the record of the party and its candidates for the past 
 ten, thirty or fifty years. As parties never retain their exact identity of mem- 
 bership or principles from one election to another, and, in the course of ten or 
 twenty years, frequently change their general drift, bias and principles, it 
 follows thai to vote with reference to so fluctuating and uncertain an element 
 as the past record of a political party is, of necessity, a delusive sham and 
 swindle. It, realizes, in fact, the supposed Rip Van Wiiikleism of the Penn- 
 sylvania Dutchman who, in the elections for Polk, Taylor and Pierce, still kept 
 on voting for Gen. Jackson, with the slight sting to our national vanity of 
 placing every American voter on a level with the supposed stupid Pennsyl- 
 vania Dutchman. We are not only at every election voting exclusively with 
 reference to dead issues, but it is almost a fallacy to suppose that, under our 
 system of fixed periods of office, we can, by any possibility, vote with refer- 
 ence to future issues, as no man can tell, in politics, what the actual legisla- 
 tion of the next Congress will relate to. He may think, when he casts his 
 vote, it will relate to resumption ; but what if gold comes down to par before 
 Congress meets? We thought, when we voted for Lincoln, that the question 
 related to keeping slavery out of the territories; we found out, afterward, that 
 it related to abolishing slavery by civil war in the States. 
 
 It is displeasing to our national vanity to find that our government bends 
 less flexibly to the popular will than the English or, rather, that theirs is per- 
 fectly flexible, and ours has no flexibility at all; that they vote on pending and 
 relevant questions; while we vote, at stated times, on past, decided and, now, 
 irrelevant issues. 
 
 How did this diffei'ence come about? It did not arise because the present 
 English system of flexibility and responsibility was, after due consideration 
 of its merits, rejected by the framers of our government as inferior to that of 
 fixed terms of office. The pages of The Federalist, in which Madison, Hamil- 
 ton and Jay embodied the highest constitutional learning of that day, contain 
 not a single sentence indicating that the element of elasticity existed in the 
 British Constitution, so far as they knew; or that the King was under any 
 constitutional obligation to conform, in his policy, to the views of the House 
 of Commons, by permitting an unpopular ministry to resign, and appointing 
 a new one in harmony with the views of that house. For aught that appears 
 in their writings, the powers of the King were as inflexible and certainly 
 during the long reign of George III were as inflexibly exercised as those of 
 the President of the United States, or the Governors of our several States now 
 are. In letter LXIX of The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton speaks of the veto 
 power of the King in a manner that no statesman would now employ. He 
 says: 
 
 "The King of Great Britain, on his part, has an absolute negative upon 
 the acts of the two houses of Parliament. The disuse of that power for a 
 considerable time past does not affect the reality of its existence, and is to be 
 ascribed wholly to the Crown having found the means of substituting influence 
 for authority, or the art of gaining a majority in one or the other of the two 
 houses, for the necessity of exerting a prerogative, which could seldom be 
 exerted without hazarding some degree of national agitation."
 
 Why the Colonies failed to adopt it. 5 
 
 Here, Hamilton ascribes the fact that the Crown had long since ceased to 
 veto bills, not to the fact that the Constitution compelled the Crown to modify 
 its cabinet and its policy to agree with the bill, but to the art with which the 
 Crown succeeded in controlling elections and Parliament. Whether this were 
 true when Hamilton wrote it, or not, it certainly would not be true to-day. 
 To-day; if a bill which the government opposes passes the House of Commons, 
 the cabinet must either resign or dissolve the Parliament, and call an election, 
 in which election the people will decide whether to sustain the old cabinet or 
 the bill. If they elect a new house favorable to the old cabinet, theu the bill 
 is dropped. If they elect a new house favorable to the bill, then the old cabi- 
 net goes out, and a new one, favorable to the bill, goes in; and hence no bill 
 ever passes both houses, so as to reach the Queen for the royal assent, until 
 her cabinet approve it and are ready to advise her to sign it. 
 
 As Blackstone's Commentaries, written a few years earlier than The Fed- 
 eralist, nowhere utter this doctrine, that the Crown must modify its cabinet to 
 agree with the House of Commons, though, in practice, it had for some time 
 been the usage, it is probable that it had not then become a doctrine of the 
 English Constitution, but was regarded as most of the features of the English 
 Constitution in their origin were as a privilege accorded by the favor and 
 grace of the Crown. Certainly there is nothing in the writings of the framers 
 of our Constitution to indicate that they regarded it as a doctrine of English 
 constitutional law at that time. 
 
 If we consider the organization of the several colonial governments, we find 
 that this system of ministerial responsibility, not yet fully perfected in England, 
 was not even dreamed of in any of the colonies. They were glad to get rep- 
 resentation of the people in a colonial assembly, on any terms, and were not 
 hypercritical as to the delicacy and accuracy of the mechanism by which their 
 representation was had. Short, fixed terms of office were to them a great boon; 
 for what they stood in dread of, was the continuance of the Crown's appointees 
 in office indefinitely, or, perhaps, an imitation, by their colonial legislature, of 
 the long Parliament under Charles I, which would not adjourn at all. The 
 more delicate machinery of a responsible ministry, changeable at the will of 
 the voters, had not then grown into being, and did not occupy their thoughts. 
 
 The chief difference between the English government and our own, in 
 respect to the promptness and delicacy with which they respond to the popular 
 will, is one of spontaneous growth, and, so far as all human agency is con- 
 cerned, of accident. The English never adopted their system as preferable to 
 ours. We never adopted ours as preferable to theirs. Each grew into its own 
 system, without so much as discussing the possibility of the other. 
 
 We propose to make a calm and philosophical, but aggressive, comparison 
 between the two, assuming that public opinion in this country, without any 
 reflection, is in favor of our own, and that this vis inertia, while it constitutes 
 no argument whatever in behalf of our system, still forms a reason why many 
 will fail to see the wisdom of any reasons that may be adduced in behalf of 
 any other.
 
 6 Responsible Government. 
 
 And first, in conferring fixed terms of office on our legislative and execu- 
 tive rulers, without the liberty of appealing to the voter at any time to decide 
 whether they shall longer hold office, we have impaired the sense of executive 
 and legislative responsibility to constituencies. Our voting masses can not 
 vote out ministers and overturn majorities in the legislature at the moment 
 when change is needed, viz: when a policy is under discussion and prior to 
 its adoption. We may decline to re-elect the members who have voted for an 
 obnoxious policy, but this not only does not hinder its adoption, but often 
 excludes from the public councils the men who, on the next measure that may 
 arise, would have voted wisely, and in accordance with the public will. Our 
 fixed terms of office, with the barren privilege of punishing a wrong vote by 
 defeat at the next election, to borrow a homely phrase, locks the barn-door after 
 the thief has escaped; while the system of ministerial responsibility, with a 
 privilege of voting against a measure in time to prevent its adoption, locks 
 the thief inside, and takes a vote on the question, " What shall we do with 
 him ? " which is a far nearer approach to popular sovereignty. 
 
 It is sometimes assumed that, the system of responsibility here would 
 require the office of President, be made a life office, or as permanent as the 
 English Crown. This need not be. The Chief Justice of the United States 
 Supreme Court is an officer as permanent, colorless, and free from parti- 
 san bias as the Queen of Great Britain. He holds during life, or, what 
 the impeaching powers deem to be good behavior. The Queen hardly does 
 more. The Chief Justice of the highest court of each State may occupy a like 
 position relative to the State government. The Queen's function in dissolving 
 Parliament and calling a new election could be performed by the Chief Justice 
 of the Supreme Court. 
 
 The real questions are, whether there is sufficient value in the principle of 
 ministerial and legislative responsibility to pay us for adopting it in our 
 various constitutions, or whether it would work as well here as elsewhere. 
 The chief value of the system is found in the fact that 
 
 1. It admits of a direct vote of the people on all important public measures 
 prior to their adoption. 
 
 2. It divides political parties on the living issues actually pending before 
 Parliament, while our system divides them, usually, on dead issues. 
 
 And as often as political parties divide on living (questions, i. e., on the ques- 
 tion what shall actually be done on a matter upon which nothing has yet been 
 done, they necessarily form themselves into a party in favor of the proposed 
 action, and a party in favor of things as they are; in other words, into a pro- 
 gressive and conservative party. Now a division of parties into progressive 
 and conservative, into parties one in favor of action or change and one opposed 
 to change, is philosophical, healthy, and tends toward the permanence and 
 durability of the State Rome, during the most of its long history, was thus 
 divided into optimates, those who believed that things were best let alone, and 
 populares, those who believed that popular rights and leveling processes needed 
 perpetual expansion. Great Britain, both at home and in her colonies, from 
 the days of Cromwell to this day, has had these two parties, known, with but
 
 How Parties should divide. 7 
 
 little variations, by the same names, viz., Tory or conservative, and Whig or 
 progressive, which is also sometimes styled liberal. Such a division of parties 
 is itself an indication that the people have opportunities of voting on questions 
 of policy. But in our American system, who can tell which party is progres- 
 sive and which conservative. Those names are never applied to either of our 
 parties, except in a spirit of demagogism, merely to catch votes. Neither party 
 is at any one time united in favor of action on any one point, or in favor of 
 inaction on any one point. During the agitation of the slavery question, John 
 Brown, who wanted to free the slaves in Virginia by revolution, was a pro- 
 gressive abolitionist, and Senators Toombs and Yancey, who wanted to call 
 the roll of their slaves at Bunker Hill, were progressive pro-slavery men. 
 Lincoln, who was willing to see slavery placed in course of ultimate extinction 
 in the States, but who would grant it every constitutional right even to the 
 fugitive slave law while it lived, was a conservative anti-slavery man, while 
 some of the early generals in our armies who sized rebel cattle but returned 
 to the rebels their slaves, were conservative pro-slavery men. 
 
 So. in the questions of protective tariffs, the currency, and finance, of State 
 rights and suffrage, there has at no time been any really conservative nor 
 any progressive party in the country. Whatever action has been taken on 
 these questions has been taken by men elected on other issues. Men elected to 
 prevent slavery getting into the territories have had to decide whether the 
 Union had power to coerce a State. Men elected to maintain the Union by 
 war, have had to decide on the issue of greenbacks and the formation of Na- 
 tional banks and granting suffrage to the blacks. Men elected in ratification 
 of universal suffrage, have had to act on civil-service reform. But on neither 
 of these questions have the people had opportunity to vote in advance on what, 
 should be done. They could merely vote, inefficiently, after action had been taken. 
 
 Now, throughout nature, the machinery which yields most promptly and 
 delicately to its controlling force is the safest. The horse which obeys the rein 
 promptly is safer than one which follows his own bent for a fixed term until 
 he has broken the neck of his rider, and then takes another rider. The revo- 
 lutions of the heavenly bodies are the least perishable material mechanism in 
 the universe, because every star vibrates responsively to every other, and every 
 orbit is made true by the fact that it is the medium course arrived at by the 
 offset of unnumbered millions of opposing and conflicting attractions, each of 
 which is obeyed in proportion to its weight and in inverse proportion to its 
 distance. Shall it be in government alone that the greatest stability will be 
 reached by giving the people a spasmodic jerk at the wheel on periodical elec- 
 tion days, and leaving them at all other and intermediate days with no more 
 voice or control than so many "dumb driven cattle? " 
 
 It substitutes in lieu of our present caucus and convention system of 
 nominating the executive in irresponsible party convention, a system of spon- 
 taneous and natural selection, whereby the two parties in Congress unite in 
 advancing to the front, as leaders, either of the government or of that opposi- 
 tion which is constantly seeking to supplant thie government, the statesmen in 
 whom they place most confidence.
 
 8 Responsible Government. 
 
 3. The system of responsible ministry imparts more good faith and moral 
 rectitude to politics, in two ways, viz : First, it requires the opposition party 
 not merely to obstruct, but to construct legislation. For it can only oppose 
 a policy on condition, if successful, of taking upon itself to propose and carry 
 out better legislation. Secondly, it compels the people to vote on the direct 
 question before Parliament in this form, viz: Will you vote for Muggins, who, 
 if returned, will vote for Mr. Gladstone's bill to disestablish the Irish church? 
 or, will you vote for Scroggs, who if returned will oppose it? Our issues point 
 back to the previous votes of candidates. The English issue points ahead to 
 his future vote, and its singleness facilitates good faith by compelling the ar- 
 gument to be made on the question actually before the people. 
 
 4. It develops in Parliament recognized party leaders, whose ability to 
 maintain their positions in that body depends on their success in satisfying it, 
 from day to day, of the wisdom of their measures. These party leaders are, 
 at the same time, cabinet officers, and thus the executive is brought into closer 
 and more satisfactory relations with the legislature than under our system. The 
 views or intentions of our President and cabinet can be arrived at only by 
 wordy calls for information on the part of Congress, responded to by voluminous 
 and often irrelevant documents. True leadership in Congress and the party will 
 be developed only where cabinet members can be daily cross-examined eye to 
 eye by the opposition. Our institutions fail to develop leaders by any neces- 
 sity, and if they accidentally arise, fail wholly to place them at the head of 
 the government. Our leadership, if any exists, is the progeny of accident and 
 force. No one would hold Grant to be a political leader in the same sense as 
 Gladstone. 
 
 6. It would give the administration the initiative in drawing, framing, 
 and defending before the legislature the proposed law as essential to the suc- 
 cess of its work; whereas, under our system, the administration has no consti- 
 tutional privilege of initiating, drafting or defending the very legislation 
 which it deems indispensable to its success. Judge Story, greatly as he is dis- 
 posed to laud and magnify the constitution, admits that we have gone too far 
 in separating the executive from the legislative power. 
 
 Judge Story (Const, of U. S. Vol. 1, p. 614, \ 869) says: 
 
 "The universal exclusion of all persons holding office (vinder the United 
 States, from being members of either house during their continuance in office) 
 is, it must be admitted, attended with some inconveniences. The heads of the 
 departments are, in fact, thus precluded from proposing or vindicating their 
 own measures in the face of 'the nation in the course of debate, and are 
 compelled to submit them to other men who are either imperfectly acquainted 
 with the measures, or are indifferent to their success or failure. Thus that 
 
 OPEN AND PUBLIC RESPONSIBILITY FOR. MEASURES WHICH PROPERLY BELONGS TO 
 THE EXECUTIVE IN ALL GOVERNMENTS, AND ESPECIALLY IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERN- 
 MENT, AS ITS GREATEST SECURITY AND STRENGTH, is COMPLETELY DONE 
 AWAY. The executive is compelled to resort to secret and unseen influence, to 
 private interviews and private arrangements, to accomplish its own appropri- 
 ate purposes, instead of proposing and sustaining its own duties and measures 
 by a bold and manly appeal 'to the nation in the face of its representatives 
 One consequence of this state of things is, that there never can be traced home 
 to the executive any responsibility for the measures which are planned and car-
 
 Judge Story's Views. 9 
 
 ried at its suggestion. Another consequence will be (if it has not yet been,) 
 that measures will be adopted or defeated by private intrigues, political combi- 
 nations, irresponsible recommendations, and all the blandishments of office, and 
 all the deadening weight of silent patronage. The executive will never be com- 
 pelled to avow or to support any opinions. It will seem to follow when, in 
 fact, it directs the opinions of Congress. It will assume the air of a dependent 
 instrument, ready to adopt the acts of the legislature, when, in fact, its spirit 
 and its wishes pervade the whole system of legislation. IF CORRUPTION EVER 
 
 EATS ITS WAY SILENTLY I.VTO THE VITALS OF THIS REPUBLIC, IT WILL BE BECAUSE 
 THE PEOPLE ARE U.NABLE TO BRING RESPONSIBILITY HOME TO THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 THROUGH His CHOSEN MINISTERS. They will be betrayed when their suspicions 
 are most lulled by the executive under the disguise of an obedience to the will 
 of Congress. If it would not have been safe to trust the heads of departments, 
 as representatives, to the choice of the people, as their constituents, it would 
 have been at least some gain to have allowed them a seat like territorial dele- 
 gates in the House of Representatives, where they might freely debate without 
 a title to vote. In such an event, their influence, whatever it would be, would 
 be seen and felt and understood, and, on that account, would have involved 
 little danger, and more searching jealousy and opposition, whereas it is now 
 secret and silent, and, from that very cause, may become overwhelming. 
 
 " One other reason in favor of such a right is, that it would compel the execu- 
 tive to make appointments for the high departments of government, not from 
 personal or party favorites, but from statesmen of high pubUc character, talents, 
 experience and elevated services; from statesmen who had earned public favor 
 and could command publjc confidence. At present, gross incapacity may be 
 concealed under official forms, and ignorance silently escape by shifting the 
 labors upon more intelligent subordinates in office. THE NATION WOULD BE, ON 
 
 THE OTHER PLAN, BETTER SERVED; AND THE EXECUTIVE SUSTAINED (or reformed 
 
 Ed.) by more masculine eloquence as well as more liberal learning. 
 
 "In the British Parliament, no restrictions of the former sort exist, and few 
 of the latter, except such as have been created by statute. * * * The con- 
 sequence is that the ministers of the Crown assume an open public responsibil- 
 ity; and if the representation of the people in the House of Commons were, as 
 it is under the national government, founded upon an uniform rule by which 
 the people might obtain their full share of the government, it would be impos- 
 sible for the ministry to exercise a controlling influence or escape (as in Amer- 
 ica they may; a direct palpable responsibility." 
 
 Judge Story does not fully develop the fact that the presence of cabinet 
 members, in the popular branch of the national legislature, is merely an index 
 or incident and not a cause of ministerial responsibility. Its true cause is to 
 be found in the fact that the ministry must resign if they can not commend 
 their policy, either to the house in which it is proposed, or to the house which 
 shall be returned by the people after one dissolution and popular election. Yet, 
 it is clear that the profoundest commentator on the Federal constitution has 
 placed himself on record as the advocate of such modifications as would intro- 
 duce the element of executive and ministerial responsibility. 
 
 6. If the success of the parties were thus made dependent, not as. with us, 
 on the aggregated virtue of the party in its handling of all the measures of the 
 previous quarter of a century, mixed and blended as they are at each of our 
 presidential elections into one confused argumentative muddle, but upon the 
 ability of party leaders to justify each measure in a popular election as it 
 arises, a recognized need would be felt for returning the wisest and most ex- 
 perienced statesmen, whether or not they may happen to reside in a district or 
 State favorable to their views or amiable toward their present or past sup-
 
 10 Responsible Government. 
 
 posed errors. At present, a vote which is unpopular in the representative's 
 district or State "shelves" him forever, without regard to whether he or his 
 successors will vote most satisfactorily on the actual questions on which his 
 successor will be called upon to act. In England, statesmen of the highest 
 ability, when not taken and returned by one district, are by another; the ac- 
 cident of residence being overlooked. Statesmanship is felt to be the essential 
 and all controlling qualification. Our numerous statesmen in private life, and 
 our numerous accidents in public office, sufficiently prove that our constitution 
 does not either develop leaders or insure their hold upon power. 
 
 7. The Responsible system would bring to an end the convulsive and in- 
 creasingly corrupt struggle for the control of the Presidency which now agitates 
 the country to its lowest depths, not only during the year in which the Presi- 
 dent is elected, but during the years preceding which are spent in plotting for 
 it, and of late, also, during the years following which are devoted to investi- 
 gating its corruptions and to efforts to overturn its result. 
 
 A/id finally : It is one of the chief and inseparable evils of our system of 
 fixed terms of office and irrelevant political parties that we elect National and 
 State officers, including county and town officers, all on national issues, none of 
 them on State issues. We have no State policies and a very inferior degree of 
 State progress in political matters, compared with what we need and ought to 
 have, and might have if the people were furnished with an opportunity of 
 voting on questions of State policy as they would be if the system of responsi- 
 ble ministry and dissolvable legislatures were adopted in each State. 
 
 Suppose at present the real question on which the welfare of Illinois as a 
 State depends, is, by what means can the idle capital, idle labor, idle coal and 
 idle skill of Illinois be combined with the cotton of the south so as to bring the 
 entire cotton crop into this State to be spun and woven, thus increasing ten- 
 fold the value of every acre of land in the State, as the building of the Erie 
 canal enriched New York, we have no machinery by which such a State issue 
 can be brought to the front; but must still keep on "voting as we fought, for the 
 Union." Suppose the first great duty of our State legislature to-day is to fur- 
 nish us with a speedy, effective system of administering justice, instead of 
 keeping every litigant four years in court, and so virtually denying and abol- 
 ishing justice, the utter irrelevancy with which we vote causes us to ask only 
 the candidate's views on the negro and war question, not whether he has given 
 a thought to the duties he is to perform. Now, it is in fact almost as impertinent 
 and irrelevant to ask a candidate for a State office what his views on the na- 
 tional questions are, as to ask an applicant for the position of railroad engineer 
 what are his views on the Trinity. 
 
 We now advance to the question, " Would the system of ministerial, exe- 
 cutive and legislative responsibility work as beneficially in America as in 
 England?" Are there any circumstances in our "environment" which render 
 ministerial and legislative responsibility impossible? Is our more extended 
 suffrage a reason why we must needs vote in a manner that decides nothing, 
 instead of in a manner that decides everything? In England, household suffrage 
 admits one-fifth of the male adults to vote. In America, manhood suffrage
 
 Its adaptation to our wants. 11 
 
 admits them all. If appeals to the country can not as advantageously be taken 
 on actual living questions here as in England, then manhood suffrage is in- 
 ferior to household suffrage. Conceding this, is it also true that the less the 
 competency of the voter, the greater should be the complication of the issue ? 
 Is the voting of the incompetent made safe only when the issues are varied, 
 irrelevant and complex? It is certainly more complex to rote for candidates 
 as Americans do, with reference to the political antecedents of their party for 
 twenty years back, than as Englishmen do, with reference to the single ques- 
 tion whether a given thing should be done. It should be born in mind that 
 under the Responsible system, the only issue on which the people can vote will 
 be one on which the administration think one way, and the majority in Con- 
 gress the other. It surely can not be more dangerous to the public to have the 
 administration act on its views in violation of the will of Congress, or to have 
 Congress act on its views in violation of the will of the administration, as both 
 now do. than to harmonize both branches of the government on one authoritative 
 policy, by calling in the people to decide between them. In so far as universal 
 suffrage lowers the qualifications of the roter, it forms an added reason why he 
 be permitted to vote on a single, unmixed issue. Nor do the extent of our terri- 
 tory, sparseness of our population, and absence of hereditary nobility prevent 
 our adopting the system of ministerial and legislative responsibility ; for Canada 
 and Australia have vast territories, sparsely settled, and no titled class worth 
 mentioning, and yet the system works as satisfactorily in both countries as in 
 England. Elections and changes in administration are not, as some would 
 suppose, made more frequent or expensive by the system. Why should the 
 popular will be more fickle or changeable in the United States than in Australia 
 or Canada ? 
 
 The change would add to the dignity and importance of the office of Chie? 
 Justice of the Supreme Court, in case upon this officer should devolve the func- 
 tions of dissolving Congress and calling elections; and such increase would 
 in like degree lessen and lower the importance of the office of President 
 or Premier. But experience is continually proving that more power and 
 importance centre in the presidential office than any one man is capable of 
 employing for the public welfare, and especially that four-fifths of the 93,000 
 officeholders now appointed by the President and taught to obey his will, 
 ought to be elected by the people, and taught to obey the law of the land. 
 WJjy concentrate in an office powers to which no man can do justice? 
 
 Let us suppose that all the necessary constitutional amendments have been 
 adopted which would be required to introduce into our Federal government the 
 system of ministerial and legislative responsibility, in lieu of that of fixed 
 terms of office. Members of the House of Representatives are elected, let us 
 say. for a term not to exceed eight years, but liable to be sooner terminated at 
 any moment by the dissolution of Congress by the Chief Justice. The latter, 
 pro hoc vice, occupies the place of the Crown of England. He is the perma- 
 nent, colorless and non-partisan element in our constitution. The President 
 may either obtain office on a periodical election, to be held once in say eight 
 years, at which candidates will be nominated by the people at large, or, like the
 
 12 Responsible Government. 
 
 premier and members of the cabinet in England, by first being the leader of 
 the triumphant opposition in Congress. In this case he has been nominated 
 and designated for his position by the opposition in Congress, subsequently 
 ratified by the people of the United States at the polls. To this end, whenever 
 the opposition party in Congress shall propose a vote of want of confidence in 
 the administration in power, they shall accompany it by a list of the names 
 through whom they desire the government to be administered. Upon the 
 occurrence of a majority vote in Congress adverse to the government, accom- 
 panied by a list of names of members of the opposition party through whom 
 that party desires the government administered, it shall be the duty of the 
 Chief Justice to order an election throughout the United States, wherein the 
 people will vote for the candidates of the party in power, or for the candidates 
 of the opposition, according to their opinions on the particular policy which 
 gives rise to the question. If Congress should pass a vote of a want of confi- 
 dence in the existing administration, without being able to agree upon the 
 members of the cabinet desired, then the Chief Justice would select the names 
 from among the leaders of the majority party. The President and his various 
 cabinet members, like the premier under the English system, would continue to 
 be members from some representative district, and to hold their seats in Con- 
 gress, proposing their policies, introducing their bills, defending them on the 
 floors of Congress, and yielding their executive positions at the head of their 
 respective departments whenever the people should vote a change. It would 
 be essential to such a system that no Representative need reside in the dis- 
 trict which elects him, but that all Representatives be chosen from the country 
 afc large, though by the people of some one district, and that the patronage of 
 the President be lessened by substituting election for appointment. 
 
 Should a candidate running at the same time for Representative of a dis- 
 trict and for an executive x>r cabinet position be elected to the latter, and fail 
 of election to the former, he might, occupy the very anomalous position of a 
 member of the cabinet, entitled to a seat in the House of Representatives, but 
 representing no particular district. 
 
 Having thus outlined the system, let us suppose it in operation, Mr. Waite 
 being Chief Justice, U. S. Grant, President, and the question before Congress 
 being whether the United States shall redeem its legal tender notes in gold, 
 on demand, on and after the 1st day of January next. If there are 283 mem- 
 bers in the House of Representatives, and the administration proposes the 
 measure in question, if 142 members and upward sustain the measure, this 
 continues the existing administration in power, and, their election being the 
 last expression of the popular voice, it is presumed the people are satisfied. 
 
 If, on the other hand, 142 votes or upward oppose resumption, the opposi- 
 tion certify to the Speaker of the House, and he transmits to the President, 
 and also to the Chief Justice, a list of anti-resumption candidates for executive 
 and cabinet positions, in manner following, viz : 
 
 For President Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana. 
 
 For Vice-President Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts. 
 
 For Secretary of the Treasury William D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania.
 
 Natural Selection vs. Caucus Selection. 13 
 
 For Secretary of State William Allen, of Ohio. 
 For Secretary of War George B. McClellan, of New Jersey. 
 For Secretary of the Interior Peter Cooper, of New York. 
 For Postmaster General Joseph E. Johnston, of Virginia, etc. 
 
 While there need be no constitutional restriction requiring that the candi- 
 dates so elected hy the vote of the opposition members in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives should have been the leaders of the opposition in that body, any 
 more than there need be a statute in England enacting that the incoming 
 administration shall be composed chiefly of the leaders of the late opposition, 
 it would, by the force of the interest of the parties, work in that way. This 
 would impart to the debates in Congress a business-like reality and force. 
 That body would no longer be the mere arena for the display of intellectual 
 fireworks, but rather the forge in which, at any moment, a revolution and a 
 new government might be created, and in which the members would speak 
 under the moderating consciousness, not only that their ablest opponents would 
 answer them, but that, if successful, they themselves must take the helm of 
 State, and do something better than that which they are criticising. 
 
 The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, upon receiving the vote by Con- 
 gress of want of confidence in the administration of President Grant and his 
 cabinet, would issue a writ for an election, in which the people would vote in 
 their respective Congressional districts for such candidates for Congress as 
 they should nominate those candidates representing, on the one side, resump- 
 tion, on the other anti-resumption and also by districts, for the existing exe- 
 cutive and cabinet on the one hand, or for the opposition candidates on the other. 
 
 Thus it could not fail, that whatever party should elect a majority of mem- 
 bers to the House of Representatives, would also elect the President and cabi- 
 net, and the complexion and policy of the two would harmonize. The veto 
 power of the President would disappear here, as that of the Crown has done 
 in England, through the complete subordination of that officer to the popular 
 branch of Congress, and the executive and legislative branches would never 
 paralyze action through inability to coalesce in policy. Under our present 
 system, which is an enlargement of the New England "town meeting," first, 
 into a county board of supervisors, then into a State legislature, and then into 
 the National Congress, there is, throughout, no system of selection, except 
 through the party caucus, no recognized party to take the initiative, and no 
 organizing motive to restrain each legislator from defeating the measures pro- 
 posed by every other, through sheer jealousy. But under the proposed re- 
 sponsible system, the organizing motive, which sorts each party and advances 
 its most powerful leaders to the front, is the instinct or passion for a common 
 success the same which promotes to the front of a herd of buffaloes the bull 
 of sturdiest courage, broadest shoulders and most invincible horns. It was 
 this instinct to win which compelled George the Third to select Pitt, whom he 
 disliked, and Fox, whom he hated, to lead that administration which, under 
 a sovereign whose name the world has almost forgotten, displayed the greatest 
 executive energy the world has ever seen, in combining the resources of Eng- 
 land and the armies of Europe for the overthrow of Napoleon.
 
 14 Responsible Government. 
 
 The system of "checks and balances," which is supposed by some to have a 
 mysterious value, would disappear, so far as concerns the present power of the 
 President to check and balance anything short of two-thirds of both branches 
 of Congress. The Senate would constitute a check upon the popular branch, 
 but not in so decided a degree as at present; for the very principle of execu- 
 tive and ministerial responsibility, implying, as it does, that the administra- 
 tion shall fight its battle in the popular branch of Congress, would cause the 
 ablest men in the country to seek seats in that branch. There the competitors 
 for cabinet positions and the oratorical thunderers would meet in combats, in 
 which administi-ations would rise and fall, and revolutions in the personnel 
 of the government would hang on the arbitrament of debate. But by all these 
 means the actual sovereignty of the voting classes over legislative and minis- 
 terial action would be made as complete, automatic and sensitive in republican 
 America, as for a century past it has been in monarchical England. Popular 
 suffrage would be less delusive, Presidential elections less dangerous and cor- 
 rupt, caucuses and National conventions would disappear, and American poli- 
 tics would be less a swindle than they are. 
 
 Ten or twelve years ago, in a conversation with Hon. Schuyler Colfax, I 
 ventilated these views in a brief, conversational way, and found that they were 
 familiar guests in his mind. He remarked that he thought the American 
 people might, at an early day, be induced to adopt the system of giving seats 
 in Congress to cabinet 'ministers, and that it would work well. About six 
 years ago there were presented in the Illinois legislature a series of resolutions, 
 recommending a re-organization of the National government on this basis. I 
 have not now the resolutions, nor do I remember what action Was taken on 
 them, nor the name of their adventurous author. 
 
 Last summer I published in the .2V. W. Christian Advocate an article, which 
 is now embodied in this lecture. It was republished, or commented on, in 
 The Chicago Times and Tribune, The New York Tribune, The Imperialist, The 
 Boston Advertiser, and The Milwaukee News, the last named paper being then 
 edited by Hon. John M. Binkley, an experienced Washington politician and 
 editor. The Chicago Times characterized the plan above proposed as "a system 
 immeasurably superior to the executive and legislative plan adopted by the 
 twelve colonies." From the remaining critics came either proposed amend- 
 ments which deny its merits, or humorous fanfaronade, or grave and sombre 
 forebodings at the supposed audacity and impracticability of the scheme. The 
 Chicago Tribune, by the pen of its chief editor, Hon. Joseph Medill, suggested 
 that undoubtedly a government, by a responsible cabinet, would be preferable 
 to our present system, but the President ought to remain permanent, as at 
 present, it being sufficient if his cabinet should go out in obedience to the will 
 of the House of Representatives. This is the system over which France has 
 been struggling for nearly ten years, in the effort to discover whether it has a 
 responsible government or not. The value of ministerial responsibility depends 
 on the completeness with which the vote of the popular branch of the parliament 
 changes the government, Under our system, the President, if stubborn, is the 
 government, and his secretaries are his clerks. Mr. Medill's system would effect
 
 The Views of the Critics. 15 
 
 a change of clerks, and would go far in the right direction. Under a fair-tem- 
 pered President it might sufficiently change the government. But how could 
 a conscientious President,-elected by one party, work in harmony with a cabi- 
 net selected by the adverse party, if the two parties really stood at issue upon 
 living questions? Either their counsels would neutralize and stultify his, (and 
 in that case he might as well have resigned,) or his will override theirs, and 
 in that case they might as well not have gone into the cabinet. 
 My next critic is The New York Tribune, which says : 
 
 He advocates a system of legislative and ministerial government in lieu of 
 that of fixed terms of office. He would have members of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives elected for a term not to exceed eight years, but liable to be termi- 
 nated at any moment by a dissolution of Congress by the Chief Justice, who 
 is, he says, " the permanent, colorless and non-partisan element in our consti- 
 tution." Whenever the opposition in Congress propose a vote of want of con- 
 fidence in the administration, they shrill hand in a list of candidates for Presi- 
 dent, Yice-President and cabinet officers, and if the motion prevail, the Chief 
 Justice shall order a general election, wherein the people will vote for the 
 administration or the opposition, according to their views respecting the ques- 
 tion of public policy on which the division has been made. At the same time 
 Congressmen shall be elected, so that a majority will be in accord with the 
 old administration, if it be retained, or with the new President and cabinet, 
 if they be chosen. The President will be a party leader, the veto power will 
 disappear, cabinet officers will hold seats in Congress, the legislative and ex- 
 ecutive branches will always be in harmony, the Senate will be a moderate 
 check on the popular branch, and the political parties will be divided on living 
 issues. This is the Professor's scheme. In brief, he would have the nation 
 change, not its clothes, but its very bones. The surgeon who said to a rheu- 
 matic patient, " I'll put in a thigh-bone and a shoulder-blade, patch up your 
 spine, work in a full set of ribs, and make a new man of you," was met with 
 the reply, "A post mortem first, doctor." 
 
 The fallacy of The New York Tribune consists in assuming that the Federal 
 constitution, which is the work of man, is as impossible to mend as the human 
 form divine, which is the work of God. Did not the nation change, not its 
 clothes, but its very bones, when it peacefully and without a tear-drop or a 
 blood-drop passed from the inefficient mis-government of the articles of con- 
 federation to the far more efficient system of our Federal constitution ? The 
 New York Tribune objects to it, because it calls upon the American people for 
 a change utterly beyond our capacity for change. 
 
 The Milwaukee News, on the other hand, objects, that while, in the first 
 instance, it would involve a change beyond our capacity for change, in short, 
 a dislocation, in the long run, when adopted, it would call for a degree of sta- 
 bility which we, as a people, do not possess. It says: 
 
 CAN WE TRANSPLANT A BRITISH CONSTITUTIONAL DEVICE? 
 
 Notwithstanding he chose to publish his views in a journal of limited cir- 
 culation, in other respects eminently a fit vehicle for the thoughts of serious 
 men The Northwestern Christian Advocate Prof. Denslow's remarkable paper 
 is having an extensive circulation through the press of the country. We insert 
 it entire elsewhere. If the object of the learned author is to redress the evils 
 under which we suffer with a practical remedy, we think it would be abortive. 
 We see and testify to the symmetry of the theory, and we would especially 
 commend the accuracy and good sense with which he detects and expounds the
 
 16 Responsible Government. 
 
 true nature and working of the English system. But to us it appears that the 
 conditions are so vastly different in America that the introduction of it here 
 would be a violent dislocation. 
 
 There is no doubt that the government more directly reflects the will of the 
 people in England than it does in the United States, and this good result is to 
 be imputed to the constitutional instrumentality. But does it. follow, that to 
 transplant the instrumentality would command here the same result? We 
 think not. It commands it there only because the conditions temper, favor and 
 regulate it. Those conditions can not be transplanted. We will not enumerate 
 them. But one, alone, will, we think, suffice. British usage is, perhaps, the 
 most impassible, the most invincible, and the most persistent organic system 
 ever known in the world, and it permeates the pettiest trifles of domestic life, 
 as it dominates the most momentous crises of State. We may define any Brit- 
 ish civil matter whatever, from cab fares to the succession of the Crown, thus: 
 habit, that is concreted usage, plus the law. We do not speak of the usage 
 known to lawyers that is itself law but usage underlying law, omnipresent, 
 spontaneous, idiosyncratic, English. We can no more transplant that, in trans- 
 planting a feature of the British civil constitution, than I can adopt for my 
 own your countenance in adopting your eye-glasses or your cut of beard. 
 
 In reply to the metaphysical objections of The Milwaukee Newt, I would say 
 that the English mind is essentially like the American mind. We have a com- 
 mon language, literature, and law, and our American fathers, in laying the 
 foundations of our government, intended to and did adopt every well-matured 
 excellence of the English constitution into our own. But this had not then 
 been well matured. In 1776, it existed only in embryo, and its nature was not 
 even detected then by our astutest statesmen. It has since been matured in 
 England rather by inadvertence than by design. It is the outgrowth of a sense 
 of honor among English statesmen, which forbids them to hold office a moment 
 longer than they represent those whom they serve. In turn, it cultivates the 
 sense of honor of which it is the outgrowth. Does The News mean that Amer- 
 ican politicians have so little sense of honor that no prearranged system can 
 induce them to resign on any contingency? If so, we can take the same course 
 an English parliament would take with an outvoted ministry that refused to 
 resign impeach them! Does The News mean that our national pride would 
 forbid us to borrow this design in politics because it is of English pattern? we 
 who wear our hair, our whiskers, our overcoats, our boots, our neckties after 
 the English mode, who copy English carriages, carriage dogs, import English 
 blooded-stock, enact English statutes by the thousand, read English literature, 
 and speak the English language; who think an English philosophy, believe in 
 an English phase of religion, and who, it is not to much to say, are Englishmen 
 and worship an English God we who see our English brethren willing to 
 adopt from us our vote by ballot, our system of recording deeds, our New York 
 code of civil procedure, the principles of which were borrowed from England's 
 illustrious Jeremy Bentham and Lord Brougham, our electric telegraph, our 
 system of propelling vessels by steam, our cylinder printing-presses, our 
 reapers, mowers, sewing machines, and fire engines, willing to receive 
 news through our cable, and to pronounce tlreir own language, under the 
 instruction of the Yankee, Noah Webster? Shall we admit that there is 
 anything the English mind is capable of devising and adopting, that
 
 A Constitutional Epoch. 17 
 
 we can not, if we will, put into still more efficient practice than they 
 have done? No. If I may be permitted, for the occasion, to borrow the lan- 
 guage of the professional American politician, I would say, I hurl back the im- 
 putation with scorn. I believe the two nations will be nearer together in their 
 future competitions, co-operations and destiny than if their governments had 
 never been severed. I would that the north and south were as much in harmony 
 to-day with each other as either the south or the north is with England. I 
 would that inore of our railroads pointed toward St. Lonis, Memphis and Chi- 
 cago, and fewer of them toward Liverpool. I would that the domestic commerce, 
 boil) of products and of ideas, betwe n the various parts of our common country 
 were greater than it is. On its increase depends an increase of the feeling of 
 unity and union. Not less important in producing these results, however, will 
 be such a remodeling of our national constitution as will render it delicately, 
 promptly and justly susceptible to the influences of the popular will, whether 
 the means to that end be of ancient or modern, of American or English, origin 
 Had the system which I have proposed been in vogue in 1858, when a Republi 
 can (John Sherman) was elected speaker of the House, a cabinet would then 
 have come in of Republican views, and rebellion, under such a cabinet, could 
 not have been peacefully matured. It was the long interval nrider Buchanan's 
 administration, after the republicanization of the north became known and be- 
 fore its administration could enter on its duties, that facilitated the peaceful 
 preparation for a vast civil war. It was the sluggish lethargy of our consti- 
 tution that rendered the rebellion possible, and it yet remains to be seen 
 whether, owing to the same sluggish lethargy, we can ever again suffer a 
 change of parties in our national government without civil war. Certainly 
 the maintenance of the old party in power for six months after it has endured 
 defeat at the polls is not a peaceful nor a prudent feature. 
 
 Our constitution was wisely framed for 3,000.000 of people. In many other 
 respects than those to which I have referred, it did not foresee or contemplate 
 the needs of 40.000,000 of people. As after the first revolution it was found 
 necessary that the constitution be wholly remodeled, so after the second revo- 
 lution, an equally important epoch of constitutional amendment may be at hand. 
 Three most important amendments growing out of the late revolution have 
 already been passed. They protect the negro only. They do not secure purity 
 or ability in the management of public affairs. Our government is more and 
 more becoming the plunder-field of blatant demagogues of both parties, who 
 are too much occupied in serving themselves to ever think of serving the 
 country. Much of this dishonesty in politics arises from the inability of the 
 people, under our system, to vote on living issues. The system of responsible 
 ministry and dissolvable legislatures will not only enable, but compel them to 
 vote on the .thing next to be done. 
 
 Of course we do not anticipate that such a reform can be adopted in the 
 Federal government before it shall have been adopted in many of the States, 
 as the Federal government will probably always continue to be modeled after 
 those of the States. But once satisfy the American people on a point to which
 
 18 Responsible Government. 
 
 they have hardly allowed themselves to give any reflection, viz., that our system 
 of government is inherently inferior to one that can be substituted, and the sub- 
 titution will be easy. The chief obstacle to be overcome is not the national reason, 
 but the national vanity. I regard this quality as a very formidable but not an 
 absolutely unconquerable obstacle. Introduce this system, let the people sway 
 legislation instead of deciding between two sets of officeholders by their votes, 
 and American politics will become more direct, more honest, more able, more 
 efficient, more dignified, and our whole fabric of government will become 
 more stable and enduring because more worthy to endure.
 
 RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 2. ITS GROWTH, PREVALENCE AND SUCCESS AS A PRINCIPLE 
 
 IN MODERN GOVERNMENT, ILLUSTRATED 
 
 BY EXAMPLE. 
 
 WHILE the advocates of republicanism, both in Europe and America, have 
 been waiting for a century past to see that system supplant the monarch- 
 ical, there have been silently and gradually developing within the monarch- 
 ical system certain habits or usages tending greatly in aid of popular freedom, 
 which have come to be known as responsible government. Meanwhile, the 
 attention of the thinkers, statesmen and politicians of our own republic has 
 been occasionally, and of late vigorously, drawn to the fact that it is a govern- 
 ment in some respects absolute and irresponsible, our office-holders having a 
 clear carte-blanche to do, during their term of office, pretty much as they have 
 a mind, subject only to impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors. 
 
 That republics should grow more absolute, and that the monarchies of 
 Europe should nearly all grow more sensitive to the popular will, is far from 
 fulfilling Napoleon's prediction that in fifty years Europe would become either 
 Cossack or republican. 
 
 This subtle change in the constitution of European monarchies so largely 
 satisfies the popular demand, and this unforeseen development of absolutism 
 in republics so disappoints the hopes of republicans, that for Iwenty-five years 
 past further conversions of European nations to republicanism have been re- 
 tarded, and instead republicans are inquiring whether the deficiencies in their 
 own system are inherent or accidental. 
 
 We purpose to inquire, first. What is responsible government as exhibited 
 in the various national examples in which it has any existence? Secondly, 
 Is the principle indigenous only in monarchies, and an exotic in republics? 
 Thirdly, Can the United States get on well without it? And, fourthly, If not, 
 how shall we introduce it? 
 
 NOTE. The above Chapter 2 was published in the International Review, 
 (A. S. Barnes & Co., N. Y.,) for March-April, 1877.
 
 20 Responsible Government. 
 
 Responsible government is that system wherein the administration is re- 
 sponsible to the Legislature and to the people for every thing that is done, and 
 wherein, to make this responsibility just, the Legislature and people have the 
 means of removing and changing the administration at any moment, to con- 
 form to the voice of the nation constitutionally expressed. It implies some 
 one officer sufficiently permanent to act, in gi-eat part ministerially, as an 
 appointer of cabinets, a dissoiver of Legislatures, and a caller of popular elec- 
 tions, to the end that the executive and legislative branches of the government 
 may, in case of conflict between them, appeal to the voting constituency or 
 people to say which is right ; and having so appealed, and the people having 
 voted thereon, their vote shall so control the complexion of the Legislature and 
 of the cabinet that all departments of the government shall bow to the latest 
 expression of the popular will. It is a system under which Legislatures and 
 ministries are dissolvable at any moment instead of being elected or appointed 
 for fixed terms of office, under which the people are appealed to only to decide 
 some living issue on which the Legislature has not yet acted, and under which 
 political parties divide and vote, not with reference to the utility of something 
 already irreparably done, but to the wisdom of something proposed to be done, 
 and on the propriety of doing which the administration in power thinks one 
 way and the majority of the Legislature thinks the other. 
 
 This system prevails ia the following States in a degree declining in rela- 
 tive vigor or permanency in something like the order in which they are named, 
 viz: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Canada, in each of 
 the Australian colonies, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Belgium, Italy, France, 
 the Netherlands, Bavaria, Saxony, Baden and other minor German States, 
 Denmark, Sweden, Servia, Greece, and in the recent constitutions of Spain, 
 Nicaragua and Paraguay. In Switzerland there is a government by a min- 
 istry without any executive. The ministry seem to be appointed for short, 
 fixed terms, with certain privileges of rotation, but are without technical re- 
 sponsibility to or power of dissolving the Legislature. 
 
 It is absent from Russia, Prussia and the German Empire, most of the 
 minor German States, Turkey,* the United States of America and each of them, 
 Mexico, all the South American Republics except Paraguay, Brazil, the Em- 
 pire of India, China, Persia, Japan, and all barbarous States. 
 
 In Great Britain the principle has attained its fullest perfection by growth. 
 In Canada, Australia, and probably Belgium, it has arisen under English in- 
 fluence and imitation. In existing France and Italy it has been adopted 
 through very deliberate preference, and in Austro-Hungary it has been re- 
 sorted to, by experienced statesmen, to accommodate the interests of a some- 
 what unpopular reigning family to the persistent, demands of the people for 
 the control of the government. 
 
 * The recent Turkish Constitution provides partially for the substitution of 
 the responsible system of government. The ministry are impeachable by the 
 Chambers, as in Portugal and Brazil, and they have the initiative in framing 
 laws.
 
 Its Rise in England. 21 
 
 In England it seems to have sprung tacitly from the doctrine that the 
 Crown is subordinate to the House of Commons. This doctrine in turn grew 
 out of the exclusive right, -so frequently vindicated by the Commons, of origi- 
 nating revenue bills and raising money. Its crowning proofs, however, are to 
 be found in the execution of Charles I, in the supersedure of James II and 
 election of William of Orange, and in the various constitutional laws settling 
 the succession to the crown, and prescribing the qualifications and conditions 
 on which it may be held. The doctrine that the Throne is bound to obey the 
 House of Commons, either as it now is (when a question arises) or as it shall 
 be after one election has tested the popular will on ^hat question, has doubtless 
 been tacitly implied, or at least insisted on, by Whig statesmen since the revo- 
 lution of 1688. Yet we find George III, in 1782-83, assenting to it so reluc- 
 tantly, that, rather than retire Lord North's ministry, which had led the war 
 for the subjugation of America, and accept the new Shelburne ministry, in 
 which Pitt and Fox, the champions of American independence, were to be 
 leading spirits, he declared frequently that his honor would compel him to 
 abandon the throne and return to Hanover, and a royal yacht was actually 
 summoned and in waiting to bear him away. Yet in due time he yielded, 
 content to escape the threatened necessity of having Fox himself, whom he 
 chiefly hated, premier. So modern, however, is the blunt statement of this 
 doctrine that the King is subordinate to the Commons, that there is a flavor 
 of radicalism in the exclamation of Mr. Roebuck in 1858: "The Crown, it is 
 the House of Commons ! " 
 
 The principle undoubtedly has its rise in the power of impeachment, which 
 seems to have inhered in the House of Commons almost as early as any germs 
 of the existence of that House can be traced. Under the Saxon constitution 
 (to 1060) there was no House of Commons. The Witenagemol (see Freeman's 
 article in November number, 1876,) included in a crude way the rudiments of 
 a Council of State, a Court of Justice and a House of Lords, but with the in- 
 formality of a town meeting. It was more like the consultation of an Indian 
 chief with his braves, or of a Czar with the heads of his bureaus. Pi-of. Free- 
 man's theory, or fancy, that it was a council of all who chose to attend, and 
 that the present House of Lords is the regular successor of the early mass con- 
 ventions of the common people, irrespective of rank, reduced to paucity of 
 numbers only by the inability and disinclination of the poorer classes to sus- 
 tain the expense of attending, is barely ingenious. It is at war with the rule 
 that the more barbarous and military the epoch, the more monarchical or aris- 
 tocratic is usually the organization of society. Local magistrates and county 
 knights may have occasionally sat in the same body as the Lords, but the evi- 
 dences are, rather, that as early as they sat at all they sat separately as a 
 petitioning body, while the Lords were a legislative body. In 1265, fifty years 
 after Magna Charta, borough representation was first actually witnessed. A 
 century later the House of Commons was strong enough to complain of the 
 King's ministers, and, for the first time, to exercise its power of impeachment. 
 Hallam declares, that at the close of the fourteenth century their consent was 
 necessary to the levy of money taxes, and to the enactment of laws, and that they
 
 22 Responsible Government. 
 
 had frequently exercised the power of inspecting and controlling the adminis- 
 tration of government. From this period to the present the King's ministers 
 have been held responsible, in some degree, by the House of Commons, at first 
 rudely, through impeachments and executions, but afterward politely, through 
 resignations; yet, down to the reign of Henry V (1413), the House of Com- 
 mons, in form, merely petitioned. The King enacted, with the advice and 
 consent of his Lords. An impeachment was in form only the humble petition 
 of the Commons that the King's evil advisers might be arraigned and tried 
 before the Lords. 
 
 The responsibility which began as an individual one on the part of each 
 minister, became a collective responsibility on the part of "the ministry " after 
 the revolution of 1688. Thenceforward no ministry waited for the jarring 
 severity of impeachment, but when outvoted besought the Throne to appoint 
 a new ministry, or if the Crown believed the people would sustain the existing 
 ministry, then to dissolve Parliament and order an election. A century earlier 
 Queen Mary had thought it no infraction of the constitution to dissolve several 
 successive Parliaments, with the view of getting one subservient to her wishes. 
 But since the accession of William of Orange, and especially since the failure 
 of the obstinate course of George III towards America, the theory that the 
 King must have no personal policy, but that the House of Commons must fix 
 the policy of the King, has steadily ripened into constitutional law. Sir Wil- 
 liam Blackstone, writing in the fourteenth to eighteenth years of the reign of 
 George the Third (17748), politely and loyally fails to detect the doctrine. 
 Alexander Hamilton, in the sixty-ninth letter in the Federalist, implifdly de- 
 nies any knowledge of the doctrine by asserting that the only reason the King's 
 veto was then in disuse was because the Crown had found it more easy to con- 
 trol Parliament by its arts than by its prerogative Blackstone may have 
 ignored the doctrine through toryism, and Hamilton may have written sarcas- 
 tically; but there is more evidence that, in their period, .this was a tenet of 
 Whig politics than that it was an accepted doctrine of the English constitution. 
 History will perhaps award to Queen Victoria's reign the credit of having first 
 displayed the conscientious and admirable non-partisanship, in giving prompt 
 effect to the wishes of either party as it obtained the ascendency in the House 
 of Commons, which was necessary to engraft firmly into the British constitu- 
 tion the principle, so emphatically announced by Roebuck, that the Crown is 
 the House of Commons. This the Queen has done without seeking to influence 
 personally either the popular elections, by which the complexion of the House 
 shomld be determined, or the course of discussion by which its majorities should 
 be controlled. 
 
 The English ministry at present consists of thirty-one persons, of whom 
 from eleven to sixteen form the cabinet, the others being usually heads of 
 bureaus, but not consulting officers of the Crown. The cabinet includes the 
 First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lerd Chancellor, 
 President of the Council, Lord Privy Seal, Secretaries of State for the Home 
 Department, for Foreign Affairs, for the Colonies, for War, and for India, First 
 Lord of the Admiralty, First Commissioner of Works, Chief Secretary for Ire-
 
 The Initiative in Legislation. 23 
 
 land, and generally also the President of the Local Government Board, Vice- 
 President of the Education Committee of the Privy Council, and the Chancellor 
 of the Duchy of Lancaster. The selection of the cabinet from among the min- 
 istry is not always the same. Generally the Premier has been the First Lord 
 of the Treasury, sometimes the Chancellor of the Exchequer, sometimes both; 
 and sometimes, as in the case of William Pitt, a Secretary of State. 
 
 The Crown, through its ministry, takes the initiative usually in legislation, 
 preparing, proposing, and defending in Parliament the bills and measures on 
 which it stakes its success as an administration. So long as these measures 
 are concurred in by the last elected House, they are presumed to accord with 
 the will of the voting constituency. By this very step the administration in 
 power becomes responsible, from the outset, for the measures it introduces, 
 and equally for failing to introduce such measures as it needs for the due 
 operation of the government. There is no shirking the responsibility by say- 
 ing: "We recommended such a measure, but the House refused to pass it. 
 We piped and ye would not dance." The whole responsibility is thrown on 
 the administration, both with reference to executive and legislative policies, 
 and kept there until it resigns. There can be no deadlock, no checkmate. 
 When the House will not*pass the administration's measures, it means that 
 they want a new administration. Parties array themselves, therefore, first in 
 the House of Commons, then at large throughout the country, for or against this 
 living measure. They do not ask whether the ancestors of those who vote 
 with them on this measure, fought for or against their own ancestors, at the 
 Battle of Hastings, or in the Wars of the Roses. 
 
 Here begins the contrast with our system in which the administration has 
 no initiative in legislation, except to suggest, some measure in a vague way 
 by message, which amounts to nothing until some bill is presented embodying 
 it. When the bill is so presented, it is the work of the member so presenting 
 it only, not of any administration or party. It has no assurance of any sup- 
 port, unless it has previously been agreed on in secret party caucus, and it 
 never can secure a harmonious or majority caucus unless it is germane to, 
 and directly in furtherance of, the one idea on which that party is founded. 
 For instance, the Congressional caucus of a party founded on the anti-slavery 
 idea can never agree on a bill of any kind relating to finance. The caucus of 
 a party formed to vigorously prosecute a war can never agree except on vigor- 
 ously prosecuting the war. The peace issue of hard and soft money, or pro- 
 tection and free trade, would split it through the middle. The party caucus 
 comes as near as our system admits of to making a party responsible for a 
 bill: but as it only agrees on dead questions, it is worthless as an element of 
 responsibility. It chiefly represents the vis inertice which causes a party to 
 move on in a given direction, because the track is laid in that line, after the 
 interests of the country require it to advance in some other direction. - 
 
 The legal status of a member of the British cabinet is that of member of 
 the House of Lords or House of Commons, the latter being the more effective 
 and usual position; and also member of the Queen's Privy Council, a some- 
 what indefinite body of eminent persons, including many not in the cabinet or
 
 24 Responsible Government. 
 
 ministry. It is as if the President, of the United States should, by usage, 
 select his cabinet from among the more prominent, members of the Senate and 
 House, these members combining to perform their representative functions in 
 addition to their cabinet duties. The chief legislative duty of an English cab- 
 inet officer, after devising measures for the consideration of Parliament, is to 
 defend those measures on the floor of either House. The chief duty of the 
 leaders of the opposition is to carefully avoid opposing a government measure 
 otherwise than by criticism of its details, unless they have something better 
 and more in harmony with the popular will to propose. This induces that 
 habitual moderation, caution and candor which distinguish English speeches 
 in Parliament. 
 
 When the wary and prudent leader of the opposition sees his antagonist 
 adopt a policy on which he thinks he can be overthrown, first in the House of 
 Commons, and then, if necessary, before the people, he attacks the offending 
 measure, and the struggle in debate is not for the empty applause of the gal- 
 leries, but for the control of the government. Each party puts forward its 
 most powerful yet most judicious combatants. It is not a contest of lung 
 power or vituperation, but of pungent wit, of polite humor, of clear statesman- 
 ship, of familiarity with the details of government,'of dignity of character, of 
 judgment in jurisprudence, of diplomacy and tact. Such a struggle over a 
 critical question sorts men and develops statesmen, by an analysis far finer 
 than any that can be made by our politicians in national conventions, or by 
 any voters at the polls. The younger Pitt and Fox, by the mastery of genius, 
 both led in these debates when they had scarcely passed their majority. But 
 Gladstone and Disraeli were nearly thirty years in Parliament before they 
 attained to the leadership. 
 
 The ministry in power, if beaten in such a struggle, may either resign or 
 advise the Queen to dissolve Parliament, and appeal to the voting constituen- 
 cies. If the latter course is taken, and the voters sustain the existing ministry, 
 it will be indicated by the return of a new House of Commons favorable to the 
 measure which the last one opposed. It will be, therefore, carried, and become 
 a law. The former ministry will remain in power, and the former leaders of 
 the opposition in Parliamerit, if re-elected to their seats, as they are practically 
 certain to be, will remain leaders of the opposition only. If. however, the 
 voters sustain the Parliamentary opposition, then the new Parliament, will be 
 of the same complexion as the previous one, and the defeated ministry, with- 
 out waiting for impeachment, resign their portfolios. The Queen invites the 
 leader of the opposition to form the cabinet, and he, accepting the Premiership 
 for himself, surrounds himself by advisors of his own party, and the retiring 
 ministers re-enter the House of Commons, of which they have all the time been 
 members, and resume their places as leaders of the opposition to the new 
 administration. It is essential to this system that members of Parliament 
 shall run for any borough or county they please, without regard to residence, 
 as in this way only can the country be sure of returning the statesmen whose 
 services are most needed, by assigning the leaders of each party to boroughs 
 or counties whose political complexion will admit of their election.
 
 Duration of Ministries. 25 
 
 This is surely the most admirable system ever devised for sorting and 
 assaying Parliament, for bringing out its fine gold and holding back its dross; 
 for maintaining at all times the ablest advocacy of government, measures and 
 the most candid and yet scrutinizing criticism ; for maintaining in statesmen 
 complete independence of party or locality, and yet for keeping the adminis- 
 tration responsible to and in harmony with the Legislature, and both respon- 
 sible to and in accord with the people. 
 
 The periods during which administrations have held power, have varied 
 from a few months, as under the Duke of Wellington, to sixteen years, as 
 under William Pitt. Parliaments are limited by law to a duration of seven 
 years, and have actually averaged about three and a half. One Parliament 
 may outlast several cabinets, or one cabinet may outlast 'a series of Parlia- 
 ments, but every popular election must change the complexion either of a 
 ministry or of Parliament. Thus, the Earl of Liverpool became Premier on 
 June 8, 1812. and continued such until April 11, 1827, holding power nearly 
 fifteen years, surviving the demise of his King, George III, and of four suc- 
 cessive Parliaments, and retiring during the pendency of the fifth. On the 
 other hand, the Parliament elected November 4, 1852, saw the Earl of Derby, 
 who was then Premier, succeeded in the following month by the Earl of Aber- 
 deen, and in 1855 by Viscount Palmerston. 
 
 Disraeli first rose to the Premiership on February 25. 1868, resigned his 
 power to Gladstone on December 9th following, the people approving of Glad- 
 stone's policy of the disestablishment of the English Church in Ireland against 
 Disraeli's opposition. Gladstone continued in the Premiership until February 
 21, 1874, when he was again succeeded by Disraeli, the elections called pur- 
 suant to a dissolution of Parliament, in the month previous having resulted in 
 the triumph of Disraeli's conservative policy, the people being opposed to the 
 disestablishment of the Church in England and other kindred policies which 
 were involved in Gladstone's continuance in power. 
 
 The average duration of ministries since 1800 has been three years and 
 eight months. In short, while the right of appealing to the people on living 
 issues exists every moment, neither elections nor changes of administration, 
 considered singly, are more frequent than our Presidential contests. Both 
 combined work a change either in the administration or in the Parliamentary 
 majority, at the average, once in twenty months. An election in America is 
 as likely to throw the Executive out of harmony with the Legislature as not, 
 but under the system of responsible government every election restores har- 
 mony between the Executive and Legislature, and causes the machinery of 
 government to move on more smoothly. 
 
 The revolutions in France for a century past consist of vibrations of the 
 people between Bourbonism, which acknowledges no system of responsibility 
 to the people whatever, either in king or ministry ; Bonapartism, which is 
 a modification of Cassarism or absolutism, acknowledging a certain obligation 
 to popular suffrage, the army and the church, but refusing to make this obliga- 
 tion tangible by allowing the ministry to be held responsible to the Chamber 
 of Deputies; Orleanism, under Louis Philippe and his Minister, Guizot, which
 
 26 Responsible Government. 
 
 adopted and attempted to maintain the system of responsible ministry and 
 dissolvable legislatures, substantially as in England; and republicanism, 
 which in its earlier experiments relied only on short terms of office and im- 
 peachment as a means of holding rulers responsible, but which in its last 
 experiment, the existing republic, has established for our example a more per- 
 manent executive, a ministry responsible to the Chamber of Deputies, and a 
 dissolvable Chamber. By the constitution of February 25, 1875, the President 
 is elected, for a term of seven years, by a majority of the votes of the Senate 
 and Chamber of Deputies united in National Assembly. He is removable only 
 on impeachment for high treason, but every official act or order on his part 
 must be countersigned by a minister. Each minister is responsible individu- 
 ally for his personal acts to the Chambers, and "The Ministry" as a body is 
 responsible for its measures, which responsibility it accepts by resigning when 
 outvoted in the Chambers unless the President, with the assent of the Senate, 
 shall dissolve the Chamber, in which event an election, must follow within 
 three months. It would seem, therefore, that the President and Senate com- 
 bined might continue an unpopular ministry in power, and this may prove an 
 imperfection in the working of the French system. The President is re-eligible, 
 and has command of the army and the usual incidents of executive power. 
 The Senate is composed of 225 Senators, elected for nine years, by the depart- 
 ments of France and the Colonies, and 75 life-members, first nominated in the 
 joint session of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, known as the National 
 Assembly, and afterward elected by the Chamber of Deputies alone. The 
 Chamber consists of one deputy for each arrondissement, and of one for every 
 100,000 population which any arrondissement may contain in excess of the first. 
 The present assembly was elected in 1871. The system has not yet been tested 
 by a popular election, but, judging from its workings thus far, it is better 
 adapted than any hitherto known to France to secure sensitiveness to the will 
 of the people, and to develop powerful parliamentary statesmen. 
 
 The Austro-Hungarian Empire, under the Constitution of 1867, presents 
 apparently one of the most complicated and yet skillful combinations, extant, 
 of local self-government, or state's rights and federative union, with government 
 by responsible ministers and dissolvable legislatures. Except the Emperor, 
 no official has a certain term of office. The empire is dual in form, embracing 
 the two independent kingdoms of Austria and Hungary, which are united in 
 their sovereign, their army, a part of their treasury, and their foreign affairs, 
 but each of which has its own legislature and its own responsible ministry in 
 all other matters. The Legislature of Austria proper is federal, consisting, in 
 its Upper House, of nobles, archbishops, and life-members nominated by the 
 Emperor, and, in its Lower House, of 353 delegates, nominated by the Provin- 
 cial Diets (state legislatures) of 17 provinces, and elected by the direct vote 
 of all citizens possessing a very small property qualification. 
 
 The Reichstag of Hungary, on the other hand, is itself a local legislature, 
 though it admits into its Upper House 5 magnates in all, and in its Lower 
 House 110 delegates, from Croatia, Slavonia, and Transylvania. 
 
 The Hungarian and Austrian legislatures unite in choosing " the Delega-
 
 In Austro-Hungary. 27 
 
 tions," which are a joint Imperial Congress of 120 members, for passing on 
 questions common to the entire kingdom; whose membership is very simply 
 composed of sixty members, chosen by each legislature, twenty by its Upper 
 and forty by its Lower House. Thus Austria has three grades of federally 
 united legislatures namely, the Imperial, Austrian, and Provincial. Hungary 
 has two, the Imperial and Hungarian. Three of the Emperor's ministers 
 namely, his Minister of Foreign Affairs for the whole Empire, his Minister of 
 War for the whole Empire, and his Minister of Finance for the whole Empire 
 are responsible to the Delegations. Besides, there is a ministry in eight depart- 
 ments for Austria responsible to the Austrian Legislature namely, the Presi- 
 dency of the Council, and Ministries of the Interior, of Finance, of Education 
 and Religion, of Agriculture, of Commerce, of National Defense, and of Justice. 
 A similar ministry of nine persons, including a minister near the King's 
 person, ad latus, is responsible to the Hungarian Legislature. The sovereign 
 is King of Hungary, Emperor of Austria, and in acts common to the whole em- 
 pire is styled Emperor of Austria-Hungary. The seventeen Provincial Diets 
 of Austria are without local cabinets, their executive officers being either ap- 
 pointed by the Crown or elected by the people and approved by the Crown. 
 This admirable compromise, by which complete autonomy is granted to Hun- 
 gary without lessening the dignity of the Empire, is mainly resultant from the 
 Statesmanship of Von Beust applied to reconcile the unconquerable resistance 
 of the Magyar race to Austrian subjugation, and the equally persistent determ- 
 ination of the House of Hapsburg not to abandon its Hungarian kingdom. 
 Wh.-it the Hungarians failed to secure by their gallant revolution under Kos- 
 siith, in 1848, they fully secured by passive refusal to send representatives to 
 an Austrian Legislature. The history and success of this example of passive 
 resistance would form an exceedingly interesting lesson to all revolutionists, 
 indicating, as it does, that peaceful methods may often be found effective, where 
 warlike methods fail, to disinthrall a subjugated and conquered people. 
 
 In the states composing the present German Empire, the principle of 
 responsible ministry is avowed by Bavaria, Saxony, Baden, Oldenburg, Bruns- 
 wick, Saxe-Weimar and Saxe-Meiningen, while it is rejected by most or all of 
 the other states, by Prussia, and by the Imperial Government itself. The Im- 
 perial Legislature consists of an Upper House (Bundesrath) of 59 members, 
 elected by the states, of whom Prussia has 17, and a Lower House (Reichstag), 
 897 in number, chosen by universal suffrage, Prussia electing 236. The min- 
 istry of the empire consists of a Chancellor (Von Bismarck), who is responsible 
 only to the Emperor, who in turn rules by divine right, and is responsible 
 only to God. The struggle in Prussia on the organization of the army, in the 
 years 1858 to 1864, was practically a struggle of the legislature for responsible 
 government -that is, for the power to control the Crown by refusing to vote 
 supplies; but the King first proved his power to go on and maintain the army 
 at his own standard by the aid of the army itself, without a legislative vote 
 of supplies, and then during a succession of vigorous wars, redounding greatly 
 to the glory of the German name, vindicated the military sagacity of the 
 course he had pursued in abridging the liberties of the people.
 
 28 . Responsible Government. 
 
 The German -people are now in fact being schooled in the art of government 
 and educated in its forms, without being all at once intrusted with its real power. 
 A deep revei-ence for scholarship, and especially for learning in jurisprudence, 
 is manifested wherever the German race bears sway. Learned doctors of the 
 law who have been graduates, and some of them instructors in the universities, 
 and "who have given their lives to the study of jurisprudence, are accorded a 
 position in practical legislation and administration side by side with successful 
 generals and noblemen, a position which in America is only to be won by a 
 happy faculty of telling anecdotes on the " stump," or by expending several 
 thousands of dollars in buying a political convention. 
 
 In Russia-> where there is no elected parliament whatever, but the entire 
 administration is carried on by bureaus, responsible to the Emperor alone, 
 there is not yet laid even the foundation on which responsible government 
 could be based. In Switzerland there is a system of government by a some, 
 what flexible and rotating ministry without any other executive than the head 
 of the ministry; but there is no dissolvable legislature, and therefore no other 
 responsibility than results from short terms of office. In Brazil, representation 
 in one Imperial legislature, federally united with many provincial legislatures 
 has been introduced, but the machinery of government is by far too autocratic 
 to admit of responsibility to the legislature being yet accepted by the Emperor 
 or his ministry, except that the latter can not plead the Emperor's orders in 
 defense or extenuation if they violate the law. 
 
 In at least one colony of Australia (West Australia), during the year 1875, 
 the attention of the people was so directly called to the subject of responsible 
 government as to result in its being substituted for the system of fixed terms 
 of office which they had previously tried. 
 
 We have thus cursorily opened up rather than answered our first question, 
 namely, What is responsible government as exhibited in the various national 
 examples now extant? To answer it fully by tracing the workings and results 
 of the system in each would expand this brief article into a political library. 
 In all these governments it operates alike to bring on elections only when the 
 decision of the people is needed on some great issue or policy; to allow no such 
 issue to be decided or acted upon without an appeal to the people; to divide 
 parties only on living issues, thus constantly burying dead prejudices; to edu- 
 cate office-holders into a high and honorable sense of their accountability to 
 the people; to make statesmanship a permanent pursuit followed by a skilled 
 class of men, not a political accident availed of by charlatans and adventurers; 
 in short, to render politics honest and respectable. 
 
 Our second inquiry is, whether responsible government is indigenous only 
 in monarchies, and an exotic among republics; in short, does it require a 
 king? Many republics, doubtless, have existed without it. The nearest ap- 
 proach Rome ever made to the principle of responsibility to the people was, 
 very unlike in method, and consisted in the theory that no law_(fer) could be 
 adopted without the consent of the entire people voting in Comitia. Among 
 modern republics only France has adopted it, unless we recognize the some- 
 what dubious experiments in Nicaragua and Paraguay. All these are chiefly
 
 Fixed Terms Promote Swindling. 29 
 
 significant as showing that of late no new republics are started on our system. 
 Even the recently '-convict" settlements of England in Australia, one and all, 
 discard fixed terms and demand responsibility. Much of the absence of this 
 principle from the Mexican and South American republics is due to its absence, 
 in 1780, from the United States. It was absent here because it was not then 
 well matured in England; because our statesmen, as their writings show, were 
 wholly unfamiliar with it; because our colonial governors had no ministers; 
 and because the colonists thought short, fixed terms of office were the very best, 
 means of holding officers to account, in which impression they were evidently 
 in error. A comparison of these data shows that this principle has developed 
 more frequently in connection with a permanent executive. But as this is 
 largely owing to our own example, a reversal of our example would probably, 
 in due time, reverse the argument. 
 
 Our third question is, Can the United States get on well or at all without 
 this system of responsibility ? It involves an inquiry into the evils incident 
 to fixed terms of office. 
 
 The chief glory of republics is, not that they promise the most trained 
 capacity in the administration of affairs; for this they have seldom been sup- 
 posed by any class of statesmen or publicists to do; not that they promote the 
 highest degree of order; for they are certainly more anarchical than other 
 forms of government ; but that they are supposed to represent most faithfully 
 the interests and will of the people. If, therefore, with less of wisdom and 
 of order, they combine less fidelity to popular interests, their cause is lost. It 
 is an axiom in human nature that agents who can not be held to account can 
 not be held to fidelity. There never was an exception to the rule, and can 
 never be. Suppose a principal in New York to have a property in Chicago 
 which he is unavoidably compelled to depute an agent to manage for him. Sup- 
 pose an individual capable of being so absurd as to agree to appoint an agent 
 for a fixed term, say four years, with no other power of calling him to account 
 in the mean time than either to impeach him for crime or to remove him and 
 appoint another agent, also for a like fixed term. Who does not see that under 
 such a system the most honest agents would be turned into swindlers? Sup- 
 pose, on the other hand, he should depute two men, each to watch the other and 
 report. Each should be agent until the other could prove him at fault; then 
 the other should take his place until proved guilty of like fault. The estate 
 would be as well managed as if it were under the direct charge of the principal. 
 
 Our so-called republican system is that of change of agents at the end of 
 fixed terms. It is incurably bad, because it does not make honesty promote a 
 politician's personal interest so much as dishonesty. An irresponsible trustee 
 for a fixed term has the largest possible interest, in robbing the trust fund. A 
 system of government which, to work successfully, demands that men shall be 
 self-sacrificing, or that human nature should be abolished, is a failure from the 
 start. The responsible system says to every office-holder, " Ye know not the 
 day nor the hour/' Therefore he must be always ready to render his account. 
 No pains on the part of the people, in nominating or electing officers, can coun- 
 teract the incurable evils of a system which inherently tends to promote in- 
 competency and knavery.
 
 30 Responsible Government. 
 
 For instance, in 1858 the House of Representatives became Republican, but 
 by our system of fixed terms the President could neither be changed nor check- 
 mated until 1860. The intermediate two years witnessed the anomalous spec- 
 tacle of the officers in charge of a government conspiring for its overthrow, 
 distributing its army throughout the South and discharging it, with the ex- 
 pectation that its officers, rank and file, would enlist in the Southern service, 
 and sending its arms and munitions of war where enemies could best capture 
 them. Had the principle of responsibility existed, Buchanan would have had 
 to appoint a Republican cabinet, consisting of men like Seward, Lincoln, Chase, 
 and Sumner, in 1858, and the Civil War would perhaps have been impossible. 
 
 But as our elections are held solely because we have reached the period for 
 holding them, not because there is any issue to be voted on; as our mixed and 
 muddled issues under the system of fixed terms i-elate to the past only, not to the 
 future; as voting on. past issues is totally frivolous at the best, many of our 
 voters, as if to make them as frivolous as possible, vote as far back in the past 
 as is necessary to gratify their innermost spite. Put up an Orangeman in a 
 Catholic district, and lo! the issues relate to Cromwell's invasion of Ireland, 
 two centuries ago. Put up the grandson of a Federalist, and the issue is the 
 War of 1812. From 1840 to 1860 all Irishmen voted the Democratic ticket, 
 though it meant the extension of slavery, because, forty years earlier, Demo- 
 cratic leaders had given the ballot to the Irishmen. After President Jackson 
 had crushed the National Bank, the people voted on its propriety. After Polk 
 had made war on Mexico, the people voted on whether he ought to have done 
 so. After Texas was annexed, the people voted on that. And after the com- 
 promises of 1851 concerning slavery, the people kept on voting as to whether 
 those compromises were right or not, until the breach widened into war. Had 
 we been under responsible government, the people would have voted on the 
 compromise before it was adopted; and that, and that alone, can make any 
 legislation a finality, Officers elected in the South on the platform of extend- 
 ing slavery into the territories, and in the North on that of keeping it out, 
 decided, without consulting the people on either side, that the South would 
 rebel, and that the North would subdue the rebellion. In 1864-65 the Repub- 
 lican party, elected on the issue of vigorously prosecuting the war, enfranchised 
 the negro, of course without consulting the people. Having done so, certain 
 congresses, elected on the crab principle to ratify these things already done, 
 proceeded without consulting the people, to contract the currency. Thus, under 
 our system of fixed terms, the issues pending when legislatures are elected are 
 seldom those on which they are to act, but generally those on which they have 
 already acted. Hence, while the people are voting when it is too late, legisla- 
 tors are without instructions and without any authoritative mode of getting 
 them. This causes legislation to drift without a helm, over the wide waste of 
 individual speculation and aimless^ disorganized, nomadic effort. For fifteen 
 years past Congress has had no financial policy whatever, and has been in- 
 capable of maturing one, solely from this inherent defect in its organization. 
 Each bill that any one member introduces is assailed by every other through 
 jealousy, lest some one member may get the credit of affording financial
 
 Our Elections a Farce. 31 
 
 relief to the country. In such an event every other member, under our system, 
 sees only detriment to himself, whereas, under the " responsible " system, the 
 measure introduced by the administration would first be devised by the wisdom 
 of the entire cabinet, which would give it a prestige and probability of wisdom 
 which no measure devised by a single member could have; it will then be 
 criticised by the opposition, but not opposed unless the opposition are ready to 
 name a definite policy against it and make it a test question. Thus, under the 
 responsible system the opposition are driven to unite upon a policy or meas- 
 ure, as well as the administration. There can be no irresponsible guerilla 
 warfare pursued against a measure. All measures are in effect either those 
 of the administration or the opposition, and each member finds it to his interest 
 to support either the one or the other. This avoids paralysis of legislation, a 
 result which is of infinite value in that very large class of questions of busi- 
 ness and finance, in which the adoption of either one of twenty proposed plans 
 is better than the failure to adopt any. 
 
 In no work on political science, which has yet come under my notice, is this 
 effect of fixed terms of office, in both executive officers and legislatures, to 
 cause paralysis of legislation, or even to cause the people to vote on dead issues, 
 pointed out. It is not remarkable, therefore, that neither legislators nor peo- 
 ple have given it their reflection. When they do, they can not fail to admit 
 that the system renders our elections vapid and meaningless, dishonest and 
 irrelevant. 
 
 " Does the pending question before Congress relate to the currency ? Then 
 vote for Jones, because he is sound on the negro and on the war." Why rebuke 
 respectable voters for despising the polls? It is the man who votes under such 
 a system that is the fool. Pulpits filled by preachers who never vote, wax 
 eloquent in rebuking pews filled with merchants that never vote. The conduct 
 of both is sounder than their theory. When voting can do no good, it is the 
 part of men of sense to cease voting; and voting to indorse this or that politi- 
 cal party, by electing its candidates, does no good. 
 
 Nothing can be more conducive to universal dishonesty and fraud in poli- 
 tics, than to call on the people periodically to vote on that inextricable muddle 
 of shams, prejudices and impositions, that perfectly irrelevant proposition, "the 
 record of a political party." 
 
 But while in any state of the country it converts popular elections into a 
 farce, in some exigencies it renders them only less disastrous, in themselves, 
 than a financial crisis or a war. The entire campaign of 1876, however it may 
 result, has been an unmitigated curse to the country. When it began, the 
 country was at peace, and, had we been under a responsible government, no 
 issue could have been made up for the people to vote upon, except one on which 
 the Administration had taken one side and the House of Representatives the 
 other, and it must have related to the immediate business before Congress, 
 which was then the question of expansion of the currency. A canvass on such 
 a question, could it have been had, would have obliterated color lines, rebel lines, 
 loyal lines, and all other lines connected with slavery, the negro, and the war, 
 and would have been infinitely serviceable and instructive to the country. But
 
 32 Responsible Government. 
 
 under our crab system of going for\vard by looking backward, the only ques- 
 tion possible was the utterly pernicious, useless and infernal one, " Will you 
 vote to indorse the past record of the Democratic Party or of the Republican 
 Party?" or, as it soon came to be put, "Will you vote for the Union or for the 
 Rebellion of fifteen years ago?" This re-opened all the issues of the war, 
 brought our submerged hell up again to the surface, and sent it round 
 belching blood and brimstone through the land. Can a system be more fatal 
 to liberty than one which renders a popular election a national calamity, which, 
 instead of instructing administrations, revives civil war? 
 
 All these evils are inherent, not in republicanism, but in irresponsibility 
 in fixed terms of office. Give England the system of fixed official terms and 
 stated periodical elections, and her elections will soon be as meaningless and 
 her officials as contemptible as ours. Her statesmanship will fade into a mere 
 memory, as ours has done, and fraud and force will run the empire. Must we 
 be borne along as was France under the irresponsible absolutism of Napoleon 
 III, until we, like the French, are paying taxes for a paper army of 1,400,000 
 men, of whom 1,100,000 do not exist? Manufacturing munitions of war, and 
 packing them away so scientifically that, before they could be unpacked and 
 put together for use, the enemy were crowning their king emperor in the French 
 capital ? Must we, like France, cross over the deep and dark chasm of commu- 
 nism before we can pass from the irresponsible absolutism of our petty emperors 
 of an hour, our horde of governing pismires, to a system of dignity, responsi- 
 bility and good faith? We have seen the generous purse of the nation trans- 
 ferred to credit mobiliers, syndicates, and gold brokers. We have seen the 
 sovereignty of the people, the power to elect to office, transferred from the peo- 
 ple to a returning board. It is but a short step from a returning board, 
 authorized to elect, whom it may prefer, to an emperor, authorized to dispense 
 with elections altogether. 
 
 I would not attempt to predict, whether through calm discussion or through 
 national disaster and revolution, the American people will be driven to adopt 
 responsible government. But if, as I believe, all responsible government is 
 subversive of liberty and of statesmanship, and unfit for a free people, then 
 will every instinct of the American people drive them ultimately to exchange 
 the irresponsible for the responsible form. As it is, in no country do the people 
 feel such ah overwhelming sense of the littleness of the men in charge of public 
 affairs. In no country are the officials so conscious that they are contemptible. 
 In no country is there a national legislature and cabinet so rapidly retrogra- 
 ding, so certainly sinking into the hands of men ignorant alike of letters, law, 
 history, finance, and even of the morals and manners of gentlemen. 
 
 Having sufficiently noticed the evils of our system, we now advance to our 
 fourth inquiry namely, how shall we set about introducing a better? 
 
 All, we believe, that is needed to bring the people to adopt responsible gov- 
 ernment is to bring them to understand it. It is more in harmony with the 
 instincts of all honest men than the system of fixed terms of office. If the 
 peasantry of Austria, France, Hungary, Norway, Sweden and numerous German
 
 Proposed Constitutional Amendments. 33 
 
 States, and the ex-convicts of Australia can vote under it, it surely will not be 
 said that it requires too much intelligence for the average American voter! 
 
 If responsible government simplifies the issue by reducing the question to 
 the one issue as, for instance, shall we resume? shall we expand? shall we 
 have war? etc. it is certainly as easy (in addition to being far more effective) 
 for the people to vote intelligently on this issue in advance, as it is to have an 
 uninstructed legislature and executive act on it; and then to be called on after- 
 ward to vote for a set of candidates of both parties, each of which had some 
 members who voted one way and some who voted the other, and each of which 
 is ready to claim to a voter who is ready to indorse a given course of action 
 that it is the responsible author thereof, and to a voter who opposes that course 
 that it is in no degree responsible for it. Thus, in our recent campaigns 
 both parties have been for " resumption " in New York and for " expansion " 
 in Indiana ; for " free trade " in Illinois, and for " protection " in Pennsylvania. 
 Surely voters who are competent to find out the wiser course amidst so much 
 duplicity would have even less difficulty if the issue were one, and that a 
 straightforward one, than if, as now, the issues are many and complicated. 
 
 Two methods of accomplishing responsible government in the United States 
 have been proposed, one of which is supported by the Chicago Tribune and the 
 other by the Chicago Times. Should an equally full discussion elsewhere pro- 
 voke an equally harmonious support of the general principle, the question 
 would be resolved into one merely of details. The first is after the existing 
 French model, namely, that the President and Congress be elected for a some- 
 what permanent term, say of seven years, and that his cabinet only be respon- 
 sible to Congress in the technical sense, he being only removable by impeach- 
 ment and conviction for crime. This might be expressed in an amendment to 
 the constitution, somewhat as follows: 
 
 The executive power of the United States shall be vested in a President, to 
 be chosen for a term of seven years by the people (or by Congress, as might be 
 preferred), the members of whose cabinet shall form a ministry, responsible to 
 the House of Representatives, collectively, for the general conduct of the gov- 
 ernment, and individually for the acts of each member. The President may 
 be removed only on impeachment for and conviction of crime. Each executive 
 act. to be valid, shall be countersigned by the minister of the department, to 
 which it relates. Ministers shall be collectively and individually removed on 
 impeachment by the House alone, without trial, for conduct disapproved by the 
 House. 
 
 The legislative power shall be vested in the President and ministry, and in a 
 Senate nnd House of Representatives to be constituted as heretofore, except 
 that the Representatives shall be elected for seven years, subject to the earlier 
 termination of their office by the causes herein provided. The President shall 
 select his ministers fron among the members of either the Senate or the House, 
 and shall, through his ministry, have the initiative in legislation in common 
 with members of either house, and the right of debate on all matters pending 
 therein. 
 
 AVhenever a majority of the House shall oppose any measure introduced or 
 sustained by the administration, the President shall either remove from his 
 cabinet the members responsible for such measure, or, if he believes that such 
 members, and not the House, truly reflect the will of the people thereon, he 
 shall, with the consent of the Senate, dissolve said House, thereupon imme- 
 diately ordering a new election of Representatives to be held within thirty days 
 
 a
 
 34 Responsible Government. 
 
 after such adverse vote such Representatives to continue in office for seven 
 years from the period of such election, or, until the next, dissolution of Congress. 
 It shall'not be necessary for any Senator or Representative to reside in the 
 State or district which he may be chosen to represent, or to resign his seat if, 
 after being so chosen, he shall be appointed to a cabinet, office; but no Senator 
 holding a cabinet -office shall draw any other pay than that pretaining to his 
 position in the cabinet. 
 
 This renders the President permanent, except in case of impeachment for 
 crime ; but he is shorn of his power, except as he may exert it through a re- 
 sponsible minister, i. e.. one removable at the will of the House. The other 
 method would resemble the government, of Switzerland in the fact that the 
 executive powers would be vested in a ministry, and not in one person; but 
 would differ in the fact that the ministry would have the power of dissolving 
 the legislature, and would be responsible to the legislature, as in England, 
 instead of being, as in Switzerland, elected for fixed terms. 
 
 The entire ministry would retire together at the will of the House, or appeal 
 to the people. It is advocated by the Chicago Times, and might be expressed 
 in a constitutional amendment like the following: 
 
 The executive power of the United States shall be vested in a responsible 
 Ministry of eight persons, the chief officer of whom shall be called the Presi- 
 dent of the Ministry. The Ministry shall be elected by the Congress (or by 
 people, as may be deemed desirable) by a ballot which shall designate the 
 position to be occupied by each person voted for, simultaneously with the election 
 of the first Congress to be chosen under this amendment, and shall hold for 
 seven years, unless sooner dissolved, impeached or resigned. The Ministry 
 shall be members of either House ex officio, but may not vote. Upon a vote in 
 the House of Representatives, adverse to any measure or course of said Minis- 
 try, accompanied by an agreed list of candidates to succeed said Ministry, the 
 said Ministry shall stand removed unless the President of the Ministry, with 
 the consent of the Senate, shall dissolve said House, and appeal to the country 
 by ordering an election of Representatives to be held within thirty days after 
 such dissolution. 
 
 The legislative power shall be vested in a responsible ministry, permanant 
 Senate, and dissolvable House of Representatives. The members of the latter 
 shall be elected each for the term of seven years, subject to the earlier dissolu- 
 tion of the House by the Ministry. 
 
 No Senator or Representative need reside in the State or district for which 
 he may be chosen, but any Senator or Representative, accepting a cabinet posi- 
 tion, shall receive only the pay of the latter. 
 
 Both these provisions agree in opening up the Senate and House to the 
 freest competitions between the best minds in' all parts of the country. The 
 theory that each -county seat shall produce its local statesmen, and that no 
 Congressional district shall have any higher oi-der of calibre than it may hap- 
 pen to produce, is as preposterous as that each county shall have no sugar, 
 cloth or iron that it does not produce. It fosters Local and sectional narrowness, 
 meanness and hatred, and prevents statesmanship from becoming a permanent 
 profession to any man, however worthy. 
 
 Still another mode, which has already been widely published, is to have the 
 Chief Justice of our Supreme Court perform the strictly ministerial functions, 
 which in England are performed by the Queen, or in France by the President, 
 in dissolving legislatures and calling elections. These are questions of detail 
 and belong to the future.
 
 Editorial Comment. 35 
 
 The language in which a law is couched is but its husk. The kernel must 
 be found in its spirit and genius. If these are laid upon deep and immutable 
 principles of human nature, and especially if their wisdom is fortified by illus- 
 trious historic examples and by long traditions, it is not innovation but conser- 
 vatism to adopt them. If they have hitherto, wherever tried, resolved chaos 
 into order, libertinism into liberty, and passion into law; if they have substi- 
 tuted statesmanship for standing armies, and jurisprudence for demagoguery, 
 then they ure planned well. That these would be the tendencies of responsible 
 government in America we expect to see Americans generally, at an early day, 
 come to admit. When they do, its adoption will quickly follow, and our repub- 
 lic will have entered on its second epoch. Its first, revolution relieved it from 
 the mastery of a foreign State; its second revolution would lift- it into the com- 
 mand of its own tendencies to anarchy and misrule, and make it master over 
 itself. ' 
 
 Among many utterances of the press, in response to the above article, 
 we select the following from the Boston Advertiser: 
 RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The International Review has an article by Professor V. B. Denslow upon 
 f e above subject, which is one among many significant signs of the times. 
 All great changes in the world's history have been merely the concrete result 
 of long previous preparation. The state of the Roman empire seems to have 
 been expressly adapted to the coming of Christ. Luther, it has been often re- 
 marked, was merely the one man to give voice to the feeling of his time. Even 
 the application of steam and electricity came upon a world demanding and all 
 ready to receive it. And the people of the United States, wearjed with the 
 unmeaning jingle of parties, disgusted with the inefficiency of government and 
 the want of correspondence between the interests of the country, and of the men 
 who assume to control it. appear to be pretty nearly ripe for the introduction 
 of a new principle. Responsible government can be easily shown to be an 
 indispensable necessity for the ultimate success of free institutions, and has 
 been adopted in other countries in proportion as the people have been admitted 
 to a voice in their public affairs. Yet there is hardly a trace of it in the gov- 
 ernment of the United States as a whole or the individual parts. If the readers 
 of these columns need any further illustration of the absurdities of our methods 
 of conducting public affairs, they are referred to Professor Denslow's article. 
 But the trouble with the increasing number of those whose ideas of remedy 
 are taking the same direction is, that they ask too much. If they can not have 
 Abana and Pharpar they will have nothing to do with the waters of Israel. 
 Thus Professor Denslow holds a dissolvable legislature, actual membership of 
 the House on the part, of cabinet officers, the removal of all restrictions upon 
 residence, and united ministerial responsibility, to be essential, while others 
 connect with these things longer terms of the executive or legislature, or both, 
 the cabalistic period of seven years being supposed to have great virtue. But 
 any such changes require constitutional amendments, which for three princi- 
 pal reasons are simply impossible. First, they involve an entire reconstruction 
 of the framework of our government, and of the difficulties of this, at the pres- 
 ent day, the reader of Elliot's debates can form a faint idea. Second, such 
 amendments must pass, not only Congress, but twenty-seven legislatures, and, 
 as in increasing the responsibility, they must perforce increase the indepen- 
 dent power of the executive and diminish that of the legislatures and of the poli- 
 ticians composing or ruling them, the absolute and uncompromising hostility 
 of the latter to the very principle is the one element that can be counted on 
 with certainty. Third.it is impossible -a priori to devise a new system which 
 shall cover all requirements and be so evidently desirable as to excite the
 
 36 Responsible Government. 
 
 requisite popular enthusiasm. Before we can overcome these obstacles the 
 chances are much greater that we shall go -.to pieces in anarchy and reunite 
 under a military despotism. We might as well try to establish a House of 
 Lords at once. 
 
 Taking things as they are, then what is there that is practicable? Let us 
 consider the situation of the incoming administration. It is such that the most 
 ardent Republican must have a half wish that the burden had been thrown 
 upon Mr. Tilden. There will be a Democratic majority in the House. Small, 
 perhaps, in number, but smarting under disappointment and defeat. The 
 majority of the Senate is nominally Republican, but, apart from the chances of 
 an early change, it is in the hands of men wedded to all the abuses of the past, 
 Unless the President plays into their hands, their hostility will be just as 
 great, and none the less deadly for being secret. If he fails to appoint, a cab- 
 inet of honest and independent men, he will lose the country and seal the fate 
 of the Republican party. If he does appoint such, the knife will be put to his 
 and their throats by those who should be his party friends. Not giving office 
 to Democrats will excite hostility in the House, but little greater than failure 
 to satisfy party claims will excite in the Senate. Investigating committees of 
 the House will discover what they desire, and nothing more, and half-hearted 
 support in the Senate with lead the country to believe that their reports are 
 true. Persecution will force its way into every corner of the White House and 
 the departments. What is the natural refuge of honest officials in such straits ? 
 Appeal to the country. But from this they are entirely cut off. The public 
 never can or will know the story of their wrongs. But suppose President 
 Hayes to say to Congress: "Neither I.nor my officers shrink from any exami- 
 nation, provided it is public, and where both sides can be heard. Instead of 
 calling the latter at your pleasure into committee rooms, where their evidence 
 can be garbled, admit them to the sessions of the House. Let question and 
 answer be individual and public, and let the country judge." If we can not 
 have a responsible ministry start forth fully armed, like Minerva from the 
 head of Jove, we can at least take the first step, and leave the rest to time. 
 The cabinet need not at once take the guidance of legislation. They do not 
 have it now, and they need not then. They would stand against an adverse 
 majority, but they will occupy that position at any rate. The opposition would 
 be public and not secret, and they would have protection from their friends, 
 which they will need a grent deal more than from their enemies. Assuming 
 them to act at first merely as witnesses, we might get no great gain in legisla- 
 tion, but we should get what is of more immediate importance, a greater 
 degree of purity. If a cabinet officer were pressed by either side to do what 
 was against his conscience, a visit to one or two members on the other would 
 elicit questions which would soon free him from such importunity; while, if 
 he were tempted to yield to such pressure, the least suspicion on the other 
 side would at once bring the whole matter to light, For the very reason, how- 
 ever, that such a step would arm an independent President against both sides, 
 both sides will agree in refusing to take it. It must be forced upon Congress. 
 But a suggestion by the President in his message, with a few hints dropped to 
 the newspaper reporters, would rouse public opinion to a point which our legis- 
 lators would hardly venture to resist. 
 
 We will add only one reflection: The Republican party has one more chance. 
 If things go on in the old way, and they must under the present system, the 
 President will go out with damaged reputation, and the party will disappear 
 forever. Four years will have been lost, and it will take at least four years 
 more to convince the country that the Democrats in power will only make 
 matters worse. The country will be very lenient in the matter of achievement, 
 if it can be fully satisfied as to the purity of administration. If the sincere 
 Republicans and the President have any regard for their future they will see to 
 it that that purity-is attained and demonstrated in the only way in which it 
 can be, by public executive responsibility.
 
 TAXATION AND REPRESENTATION; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF CAPITAL IN GOVERNMENT. 
 
 THE United States of America became a nation in vindication of the princi- 
 ple that taxation and representation are inseparable, t. ., that only those who 
 pay the taxes should have the power to impose them. This is an English prin- 
 ciple, and grew up out of the theory that the Crown was self-supporting out 
 of its own private lands and revenues, as originally it was, and only needed 
 the aid of taxes, or as they were called in England' extraordinary revenues, 
 to help it out in emergencies. Great Britain fought to subdue the thirteen 
 colonies, in the groping after another principle, not then very clearly under- 
 stood, viz : that expenditure and taxation are inseparable. The mother country 
 had expended several millions during the wars known here as the Queen 
 Anne's and French and Indian Wars, in sending over regulars under Braddock 
 and Montgomery to defend the colonies from, the French and Indians, and in 
 part with an ultimate view to capture the Canadas from the French. These 
 expenses caused an illogical void in the British budget. Why should the peo- 
 ple of London or Yorkshire, Scotland or Ireland, India or Australia be taxed 
 to defend the America! colonies from their French and Indian neighbors, or to 
 conquer the Canadas for the future security of the thirteen colonies? Yet the 
 tax to reimburse the treasury had to be drawn from somebody somewhere. 
 What policy more logical or just than to draw it from the people who had asked 
 for and been specially benefited by the expenditure? But "no" said Massa- 
 chusetts, New York and Virginia, "we will not pay the tax, though we concede 
 that the expenditure benefited us especially, because government ceases to be 
 constitutional and free when taxes can be imposed by any others than those 
 who pay them." Out of this principle our nation was born. 
 
 It is the purpose of this lecture to show, first that the American people 
 failed to put into absolute practice the theory they then fought to inculcate 
 into the British mind; thus illustrating Shakspeare's witticism: 
 
 "'Twcre easier to teach twenty what 'twere well to do, 
 Than be one of the twenty to follow our own teaching." 
 
 And secondly, that we would be greatly benefited as a nation by giving to this 
 principle its full scope and effect.
 
 38 Responsible Government. 
 
 England has maintained in her other colonies the theory for which she then 
 fought, that expenditure and taxation are inseparable, that the expenses of 
 India shall be paid by taxation upon the Hindoos, those of Canada by Cana- 
 dian taxes, and those of Australia by taxes on the Australians. 
 
 The American States, on the ratification of their independence, attained to 
 full power to apply the principle, that taxation and representation are insep- 
 arable, and supposed they were applying it when they provided in the various 
 State consti utions that all adult male citizens should vote, that there should 
 be a representative to a certain quota of population, and that all property 
 should be taxed according to its value. It was scai-cely observed, so equal was 
 then the diffusion of property, that many would vote who paid no taxes, and 
 that many who paid taxes would have no vote, and that, in short, they had 
 divorced representation from taxation, and had married it to population, which 
 was quite a different spouse. Perhaps our forefathers, full of old testament 
 wisdom, foresaw 'that a Jacob who would labor seven years for a Rachel, 
 if then rewarded with the Leah whom he didn't want, would labor another seven 
 years for the Rachel he did want, and thus make a good provision for two 
 in other words, that the people might ultimately be represented in proportion 
 to taxation in one house, and in proportion to population in another. 
 
 No statistics are taken in the United States nor in any State of the number 
 of tax-payers. As the State, county and town taxes rest on property, none 
 are payers of such taxes by virtue of being either producers or consumers. 
 They consist of a well defined class whose property, real and personal, is as- 
 sessed, and according to which assessment a bill is made out, for which if not 
 paid the property is sold. The burden of the tax can not be transferred. Its 
 whole "incidence" or loss falls on him who pays it. Federal taxes are 
 another matter. The census enumerates carefully every other beast of burden. 
 Illinois, however, in 1872, cast 426,882 votes; and in 1870, according to the 
 census contained 395,937 persons whose occupations were enumerated, exclu- 
 sively of those engaged in manufactures and transportation. Assuming that 
 the voters and the persons whose occupations are enumerated in the census, 
 including those engaged in manufactures and transportation, are about 425,000 
 persons, and that they are pretty nearly the same persons, notwithstanding a 
 small proportion of the persons included in the enumerated occupations are 
 females, we have a basis from which to estimate the number of tax-paying 
 voters. The 153,646 farmers are all tax-payers and voters, and alone form 
 two-fifths of the voters of the State. The 125,331 laborers, farm laborers and 
 servants are so nearly all non-tax-payers, that we may assume there are not 
 more than 5000 tax-payers among them all. Of carpenters, blacksmiths, mer- 
 chants, shoemakers, teachers, clerks, wheelwrights, physfcians, masons, millers, 
 tailors, lawyers, students and inn-keepers, there are 56,868, of whom doubtless 
 three-fourths, or say 40,000, pay taxes on real and personal property ; these 
 leave 40,000 unaccounted for, whom we refer to railroading, transportation, 
 navigation, mining, manufacturing, politics, preaching, office-holding, crime 
 and other parasitic industries, among whom we will assume that two-thirds 
 are tax-payers. On this basis our payers of State taxes are,
 
 Ratio of Tax-payers to Voters. 39 
 
 Farmers, ... 153,646 
 
 Tax-paying farm laborers, other laborers and servants, - - 5,000 
 
 Tax-payers of the enumerated occupations, - - 40,000 
 
 Tax-payers of the non-enumerated occupations, - - 27,000 
 
 Total, ...... 225,646 
 
 Or a little more than half the voters. The tax-payers of any State in the 
 Union, if united, could probably carry it against the non-tax-payers by a small 
 majority, though a census of the tax-payers or a new system of returns by the 
 town assessors to the comptroller of the State, would be necessary to give to 
 such estimates any trustworthy character. 
 
 But hitherto in this country, no issue has been joined on any large scale 
 between the tax-payers and non-tax-payers. Until such an issue is joined, 
 every tax-payer votes precisely as if he were a non-tax-payer. Occasionally in 
 some local school district or town election the issue will be drawn. 
 
 Thus in a school district with which I was acquainted in an eastern State, 
 there was a sudden influx of millionaires without children, whose personal 
 property tax became an easy prey to the resident voter. The sudden thirst for 
 learning displayed by the parents of that district could only be compared to the 
 enthusiasm with which poor house contractors pursue works of charity for 
 their own sake, or to the interest an Indian agent feels in clothing the naked. 
 Extras and special courses were piled up until the mere tuition at that school 
 amounted to $600 per pupil per year, or nearly as much as both tuition and 
 board cost at Yale College. The lines were drawn at a school election, the 
 question being whether the millionaires had any constitutional right to a sur- 
 plus for the maintenance of their families, or whether the parents of the district 
 had the power to vote all the incomes of the residents of that district to the 
 support of the school in question, leaving to those who eai-ned the incomes only 
 a contingent remainder. The effect of the election was, to decide that if the 
 millionaires would thenceforth devote about $250 per pupil per annum to the 
 education of the suffering children of that district, they might retain the bal- 
 ance of their property. Your lecturer had been partially educated, some fif^en 
 years earlier, in the same district, when the aggregate expense to the tax-payers 
 for maintaining the same school was only about $3 per pupil per annum; and 
 to this day he attributes most of his deficiencies in logic, embroidery, dancing, 
 and in the use of the piano, the harp and the timbrel, and in German, Italian, 
 and pure speculative philosophy, to the fact that he was born fifteen years too 
 soon. He should have lived hereafter, when he could have had the benefit of 
 $600 per year of other people's money without rendering any equivalent, 
 How many times a day ought the Bible to be read in such a school at the point 
 where it says " thou shall not steal," to efface the influence of the fact that 
 the very Bible they were reading and the building in which they were reading 
 it were stolen? 
 
 In one of the counties of Illinois, in 1865/36 voters had advanced 100 each 
 to save the town from the draft. Shortly after they procured an act to be 
 passed authorizing towns in that county which had not filled their quotas, to
 
 40 Responsible Government. 
 
 levy a tax therefor. On the day after the act was passed, and before i-eading 
 its exact terms, these 36 voters, there being 95 voters in all in the town, got 
 together, called themselves a town meeting, voted themselves $3600 in bonds, 
 voted also a bonus of several hundred dollars to the town officers who issued 
 the bonds, and the bonds were issued and the tax actually levied on the whole 
 taxable property of the town, when the courts intervened, and held the election 
 void, because the notice of election called for by the act had not been given. 
 It is a humane principle of our election law, that no tax-paying constituency 
 going down from Jerusalem to Jericho shall be set upon and stripped and beaten, 
 and left for dead upon the highway, without due notice of the intention of 
 the voting constituency being given, for all robbery, to be legal, must be con- 
 summated in accordance with the sacred forms of the constitution ! Our entire 
 scheme of voting aids to schools, railways, parks, canals, etc., is based on the 
 theory that the right to tax is in the voters, while the obligation to pay is in 
 the tax-payers, and that the tax-payer, as such, has no constitutional rights 
 which the voter is bound to respect. 
 
 William M. Tweed, by sending a barrel of flour and a ton of coal occasion- 
 ally to the poor voters of his ward or to some small fraction of them, controlled 
 the non-tax-payers of the ward, and through them the tax-payers whose money 
 paid for the coal and flour, and through the ward he controlled the city, and 
 ultimately the disbursement of from $25,000,000 to $40,000,000 a year, or more 
 than thirty of our State governments combined were disbursing in 1860. In 
 the disbursements of these moneys for marble, upholstery, and services on its 
 public buildings, rings were formed which levied toll on the bills paid by 
 the city, in sums which soon made the members of these rings the recognized 
 princes and plunderers of the metropolis. Nearly every city in the country 
 does the same thing in a less degree. 
 
 Impracticable theorists who don't know how to make money under the 
 glorious institutions of a free country, slanderously call -this stealing. It is 
 only the legitimate result of the sublime truth to the dignity of which the whole 
 American people have arisen, that A and B who pay no taxes can vote how 
 mu^ch tax C shall pay, and what shall be done with it when paid; and that be- 
 cause A and B ai-e represented, therefore C is represented. 
 
 Taxation and representation to be inseparable must be proportionate and to 
 be proportionate, the entire expenses of our State government, say $4,000,000 
 ought under our present system of voting to be paidby a poll tax of $10 on 
 every voter. Every voter assumes in voting to dispose of about $10 of some- 
 body's money. If he has paid the $10 of State taxes, he, in voting, asserts the 
 lawful right of a proprietor to dispose of his own. If he has not paid the $10, 
 he, as a political free-booter, exercises in voting a power to dispose of another 
 man's money, which is a power without a right. 
 
 Lord Chatham, in 1775, in the speech attributed to him, but the standard 
 report of which is from the pen of Dr. Samuel Johnson, sneered at the notion 
 that his Majesty's commons of Emgland could tender to his Majesty aid and 
 supplies from the money of his Majesty's commons of America. But the non- 
 tax-payers of America have never had any scruples in voting aids and sup-
 
 The Soaring Eagle. 41 
 
 plies to be paid by the tax-payers gf America. The separation of the class 
 that votes the tax from the class that pays it, by 3000 miles of ocean, is not the 
 fact which constitutes the tyranny. A distant oppressor would be moderate 
 in his demands in the degree that he was insecure in his tenure. He could at 
 best, only swoop down upon us like the eagle, bury his talons occasionally in 
 the firstlings of our flock and bear them away. But if coiled in ten thousand 
 anaconda folds around all our limbs, the despotism becomes intense in the 
 degree that the despot is identified with his victim, until, in the final fierce 
 embrace, rescue becomes impossible and both must perish together, or the 
 serpent only will survive. 
 
 But, says the average American statesman, to-wit : the voter, (for American 
 statesmen, like British poets, are born, not made,) "who is harmed by this theo- 
 retical injustice? Do the spots upon the sun, which only an astronomer sees, 
 diminish its usefulness? And can not the eternal glory of our National escut- 
 cheon afford a few spots, by way of completing its resemblance to the exhaustless 
 source of light and life which warms the universe? Don't American corn have 
 longer eai-s with more rows on them, and don't American hens lay more eggs 
 a day, and aren't a larger proportion of the eggs laid with a double yolk, and 
 don't the American eagle soar higher, and the American hog root deeper, and 
 the American rooster crow earlier and louder, and according to more correct 
 principles of crowing, and don't the American soil breed more brains and more 
 brawn, and more muscle and more nerve to the half acre, than is to be found 
 under the enervating flag of any of the effete and crumbling monarchies and 
 corrupting dynasties of the Old World? Can't, we allow more public money to 
 be stolen than any of the picayunish and impoverished treasuries of Europe 
 could afford, and have more left to divide up among ourselves after it is stolen? 
 Can't we employ five times as many public servants to render one-fifth as much 
 public service at a given cost as any other nation on earth? And haven't we 
 shed more of the blood and treasure of our own people in twenty years, than 
 it has cost any other government on earth to maintain itself for a century? 
 And can there be any doubt that a system of government which has cost the 
 lives of millions to maintain, must be valuable in the degree that it is costly? 
 Haven't we crushed the biggest rebellion the world ever saw, and isn't it as a 
 general proposition true, that any government is valuable in proportion to the 
 frequency and the bigness of the rebellions it is crushing, and the weight with 
 which it can sit down on the conquered rebellions when they are crushed ? And 
 isn't it a proud satisfaction to know that 12,000,000 of people out of 40,000,000 
 who have been trying to escape from the blessings and get out from under the 
 freedom of our glorious liberty can't do it, but have been pinned into the enjoy- 
 ment of our common brotherhood and national unity by the national bayonet? 
 
 Leaving both the eagle and the buzzard to soar, we come down to a plain 
 matter of fact inquiry, what have been the effects of awarding representation 
 in America to mere numbers, leaving capital unrepresented? 
 
 In England, where capital, or essentially land, and the church, are exclu- 
 sively represented in the House of Lords, and influence the election of five-sixths 
 of the House of Commons, we are struck by the fact that no tax rests on land
 
 42 Responsible Government. 
 
 or accumulated capital of any kind, while throughout all the American State 
 governments the entire burden of State and local taxes rest on land and 
 accumulated values, and no tax whatever on earnings, incomes, processes or 
 other incidents of industry. In England, equality and uniformity of taxation 
 mean the equality of all persons in proportion to their incomes and earnings. 
 In America, the same, words mean the equality of all persons in proportion to 
 the value of the implement with which they work, i. e. their accumulated 
 capital. In England, not only is capital protected from taxation, but from 
 spoliation. The solvent borrower who refuses to repay, must pay the cost of 
 collecting the debt at law. In all the Western States, the lender who refuses 
 to wait until the borrower is ready to pay, must pay the cost of the effort to 
 collect, and hence, while in England a debt against a solvent debtor who refuses 
 to pay is worth its face, in Illinois it is worth according to its amount from 
 two-thirds to one-third of its face. In England, crimes against the property 
 and the person are punished with a fidelity of which we know little. In Illi- 
 nois 'the criminals are screened from justice with an infidelity of which the 
 world knows much. Unemployed capital flows to England from all parts of 
 the world for the security afforded by its banks and other credit institutions 
 and its courts of justice. But he who has deposited his money in a Chicago 
 bank, feels that he has cast his bread upon the waters, and may look for it 
 with the same probability of finding it on the banks of the Thames or the 
 Ganges, 
 
 " Or by the lazy Scheldt or Wandering Po." 
 
 Or wherever else the unfortunate cashier can get board without registering 
 his true name. 
 
 A voice: How about the Bank of Glasgow? 
 
 Ans. The Bank of Glasgow failed through honestly made investments, 
 though unwise ones. The directors were guilty, not of converting the money 
 to their own use, but of appropriating it irregularly in mo'des designed to serve 
 the interests of the stockholders. For this irregularity they have been con- 
 victed, and are now in prison, 'suffering the penalty of violated law. More- 
 over, the property of the stockholders has been seized to reimburse the depositors. 
 But in Chicago, where banks without number have been scuttled of their de- 
 posits by their officers, who has been punished? And where are the stock- 
 holders who have redeemed the word of promise to the depositors? There are 
 none such. 
 
 The American States, in their forty Legislatures, probably employ 6000 
 persons in making laws, all salaried, as against the 600 to 1000 persons, 
 none of whom are salaried, who make laws for the British Empire; hence our 
 remarkable cheapness ! Of these 6000 legislators, if our Western States may 
 serve as a sample, hardly one in fifty is a lawyer; hence our remarkable 
 skill! The general object and drift of all the legislation of these forty legisla- 
 tures is to protect the non-tax-payers, who constitute the most manageable part 
 of their constituency, from all taxes on earnings or occupations or consump- 
 tion, from all assertion of rights on the part of tax-payers, from all collection 
 of debts, and ultimately from all punishment of crime.
 
 Effect on Rates of Interest. 43 
 
 Hence, in England, where capital feels secure, it will render its aid to in- 
 dustry at 3 per cent, per annum, while in Illinois, if asked to lend money 
 on the same kind of bond tind mortgage as would suffice in England or in New 
 York, i. e. one which a resort to the courts is necessary to foreclose, it would 
 probably ask 25 per cent., but if given a trust deed of most of the borrower's 
 present property and a judgment note which it can at any moment convert 
 into a deed of his future property, it will lend at from 8 to 15 per cent. But 
 the golden treasure enters the State of Illinois under as close a guard as it 
 would Turkey. First there is the fierce and flashing Bashi Bazouk, with 
 drawn scimeter, who determines the question of the value of the property. He 
 is a Pacha, not of three tails but of three per cent. Then there is the heavily 
 sabred and moustached apostle of the Koran, known as the commercial agency, 
 which is secretly consulted as to the moral and religious character of the bor- 
 rower, and whether he has always paid previous loans without contest. Then 
 there is the band of bearded pards or legal sharps who have been following 
 the tortuous windings of the Illinois Legislature and Supreme Court for forty 
 years in the joint efforts of these two bodies to help and relieve the debtor 
 class by means of clumsy acknowledgment laws, homestead laws, provisions 
 for appeal and for stays that are without cost, without security and without 
 limit as to variety, tax laws which divest the title of both borrower and lender 
 unless certain taxes are paid, redemption laws, and such an organization of 
 the courts that during eleven months of the year in many parts of the State 
 the collection of debt is suspended. To steer clear of all these obstacles the 
 lender demands a deed of the debtor's present property and a judgment note 
 against his future, such as no debtor would ever think of giving, save in a 
 country whose legislature and courts had been "protecting" the debtor class 
 for half a century. Relatively therefore, to a country in which capital is 
 represented, Illinois pays from 3 to 8 fold interest for the privilege of so legis- 
 lating as to make capital insecure. Give capital a representation 1n our legis- 
 lature and it will be as secure in Illinois as in London. If as secure, it would 
 be as abundant at 3 per cent. If abundant at 3 per cent, the manufactures 
 for which we wait in vain, though we have every facility but capital, would 
 come, converting Illinois into a Belgium, our Ottawas, Elgins, Rockfords, 
 Peorias and Rock Islands into Birminghams, Manchesters, Leeds, Sheffields, 
 where would be spun the great part of the cotton crop of the South, and 
 where would be smelted the ores bf Missouri and Superior, and where would 
 be assayed the precious ores of the Rocky Mountains. For by a law that is 
 irreversable, the cotton, ores and metals, costing but about one-sixth for trans- 
 portation of what the breadstuff and coal essential to their manufacture cost 
 to transport, would come here by the same law which caused Mahomet to go 
 to the mountain, viz: that the mountain refused to come to him. If the rep- 
 resentation of capital in Illinois would give it the security which it does in 
 England, as I believe it would, it would add in a very brief period 10,000,000 
 of souls to the population of the State, and untold thousands of millions of 
 dollars to its lands. Large sections of our State, and especially those whose 
 future prosperity depends on the introduction of manufactures, are at a stand
 
 44 Responsible Government. 
 
 still for want of capital. Agriculture, seeking new lands to skin, drifts through 
 them for the farther west. Capital examines them, but on inquiry at our banks 
 learns that money is never loaned in this State to promote production, the time 
 required is too long, and the means for getting it back when loaned to promote 
 production are too uncertain. It is only loaned on values produced, i. e. on 
 grain in the bin, where it promotes speculation and exportation. If it goes 
 further and inquires why capital is never loaned here to promote production, it 
 learns that it is because, instead of laws for the collection of debts, we have 
 only a system of laws for the encouragement of debtors in defrauding creditors; 
 and if still further it inquires why the debtor class exercise this power, it ascer- 
 tains that it is for the same reason that an Indian tribe would sustain scalping, 
 viz: that the scalpers are in the majority. 
 
 Along with high rates of interest, as a consequence of the government by 
 by an undisciplined mob, come low standards of public virtue and of personal 
 dignity as exhibited in our literature, in our drama, in our social manners 
 so far as they are affected by politics, and in the acquirements of our public 
 men. 
 
 In literature, the class of European works' in which persons of some dignity 
 of social position and character figured, have given place in our markets to the 
 writings of a class of American humorists, in which the humor, if analyzed, will 
 be found to consist largely in such an association of slang expressions with 
 refinement of sentiment as will flatter every American into the feeling that if 
 his manners and language are boorish, the inference is irresistible that his 
 heart is kind and tender, and his sentiments are a delicate admixture of poetry 
 and honor. Mark Twain, Artemus Ward, Will Carleton, John Hay, Josh Bil- 
 lings, Orpheus C. Kerr, P. V. Nasby, Bret Harte, the Danbury News man, all 
 agree in importing into literature for the delectation of American society such 
 a hash of slang and refinement as will convey the imprefesion that every man 
 ignorant of grammar is the soul of chivalry. On the stage, the Danites, " Josh 
 Whitcomb," "My Awful Dad," "The Two Orphans," "Our American Cousin," 
 and nearly every play produced within twenty-five years past, has had one or 
 the other of two aims, either to prove that people of aristocratic birth and 
 education are on the verge of idiocy, like Lord Dundreary, or are destitute of 
 morals and of honor, while ruffianism of manners is the external garb of true 
 fidelity and refinement of character, in short, if you would meet the true 
 gentleman, scratch the first ruffian or vagabond you come to, and vice verse. 
 English society has gone far in toadying to its counts, earls and kings. But if 
 Hs civilization suffers more from cringing upwards than ours does from fawn- 
 ing downwards, if its manners are worse affected by imitating the dignity of 
 the great than ours from aping the vulgarity of the mean, then indeed science 
 is wrong, and it is the sun which absorbs the light which opaque bodies send 
 to it. 
 
 Looking at our social manners as affected by politics, we find the average 
 American politician (for the manners which originated in the west are rapidly 
 spreading over the east as well,) is treated by his constituents not in any sense 
 as a gentleman, but with a mixture of the flunkeyism with which a lackey over-
 
 How the Sovereigns Condescend. 45 
 
 rates a nobleman with whom he is brought in contact, and the contemptuous 
 familiarity with which a boor regards one on whom he is conferring "the favor 
 of his patronage. Illinois ignores the gentleman, Mr. Richard J. Oglesby, to 
 patronize the favorite son, Major General Dick Oglesby; so of Bill Springer, 
 Dick Yates, Dick Townsend, Josh Allen, Jack Logan, and formerly "Nancy" 
 Arnold and "Long John." "Honest Old Abe" was at home in this kind of 
 familiarity; so was the "Little Giant." Ohio has " Foghorn" Allen, a "Gen- 
 tleman George," and formerly had a Sunset Cox. The Wisconsin Legislature at 
 its senatorial election had to inquire of its candidate whether his mother knew 
 him as Matthew Hale Carpenter, or as Matt. Chandler of Michigan is " Zach," 
 and Williams of Indiana is " Blue Jeans," and the gentle Colfax of the same 
 State used to be known to his more presuming friends as the smiling "Sky." 
 Even the commonwealths, while aspiring to the dignity of empires, also fall 
 under the indignity of this species of slang nick-names which in the Old World 
 is confined to thieves and the fish-markets. Thus Ohio is the Buckeye State; 
 Indiana the Hoosier State; Illinoisa'ns are " Suckers ; " Wisconsin in her play- 
 ful mood is " Badger," and Michigan is " Wolverine." 
 
 Had Lord Brougham represented Chicago in Congress, he would have been 
 Long Hank. Earl Russell would have been Little Jack, Sir Robert Peel would 
 have been plain Bob, like Ingersoll, and the Hon. John Bright would have been 
 Jack Bright, like Logan, or if he changed his party, then " Dirty-work" Bright. 
 Even the right Hon. William E. Gladstone would be compelled, when his sov- 
 ereign, the mob, was pleased to be gracious in his cups, to hear himself styled 
 "Bill," as Mr. Seward, with all his dignity, used occasionally to be. 
 
 These external signs of familiar contempt express the truth that Americans 
 do not look upon their public men as anything more than winners in a game 
 of chance. Americans have great reverence for the constitutions and systems 
 of government which result in putting a certain class of men in public office, 
 but they know that those men are almost never skilled, and are seldom trust- 
 worthy. In every American audience therefore, in which the wholesale incom- 
 petency of public officers is assumed and their corruptions denounced, the 
 utterance will be applauded. But if you intimate that the institutions are at 
 fault, the answer will be "no. the tree is perfect, only the fruit is corrupt." In 
 three points, as a rule, the American citizen's faith is firmly rooted : First, 
 that the constitutions of the United States and of each State, are divine. Sec- 
 ond, that the aggregated opinions of a sufficiently large mass of people, though 
 the opinion of each one may be of no value whatever, becomes the divine wisdom 
 and never errs, and thirdly, that a divinely inspired people, acting through a 
 divinely inspired constitution, perpetually elect to office a worthless set of ras- 
 cals. Here we have a trinity, therefore, in which the father is divine and the 
 son is divine, but the joint energy and operation of the two, as manifested in the 
 practical politician, instead of being the Holy Ghost, is the Devil, and yet after 
 this Devil has done his perfect work in the Legislatures and in Congress, the 
 glamour or divine fog again descends upon it, and the people regard every 
 actually finished product of the industry of these rascals while in office, as 
 undoubtedly wise i. e. the foot-prints of the Devil are consecrated ground !
 
 46 Responsible Government. 
 
 The wholesale distrust felt by the people in the quality of our public offi- 
 cers is far more just and deserved than the faith they repose in the wisdom 
 of our constitutions, or in the implicitness with which they assume that the 
 aggregate ignorance of a sufficiently large number of utterly uninstructed 
 persons, especially if their opinions be taken by ballot, becomes divinely illu- 
 minated with wisdom. Whatever qualities render a public man unlike the 
 mass of the people in his vfews, retire him from office. The people naturally 
 regard themselves as the fountains of political wisdom, and do not want any 
 man at Springfield or at Washington whose views differ in the least on politi- 
 cal questions from those which a man will arrive at who spends all but a few 
 honrs of every year in currying down his horse or selling his goods. The 
 average American citizen really studies politics, generally by the aid of very 
 incompetent teachers, about ten hours in the course of a year; but the only 
 years in which his mind is flexible, or he is capable of learning anything, are 
 those between seventeen and thirty. Very few of them ever admit a new 
 political idea into their heads after thirty. The average voter's political 
 knowledge may be summed up in the following pocket library: 
 
 Vol. 1. America is the only country that was ever free. 
 
 Vol. 2. The Democratic (or Republican, as the case may be,) party is the 
 continued salvation of American freedom. 
 
 Vol. 3. General Jackson is the Alpha and Omega of modern statesman- 
 ship. 
 
 Vol. 4. Statesmanship consists in doing what a wayfaring man, though a 
 fool, thinks is right, and which so accords with the common sense of common 
 people, that the more foolish a man is the more clearly he sees it is right. 
 
 Vol. 5. The only great questions now in politics are, polygamy in Utah 
 and the grasshoppers in Nebraska. Both these should be abolished by an 
 act of Congress. 
 
 Vol. 6. There is some danger that the Catholics may get the upper hand, 
 and in that event the Pope would capture Washington and put a crucifix on 
 every school house. This is to be prevented by teaching everybody how to 
 read, and nobody how to work. 
 
 Vol. 7. I don't know exactly what free trade is. but whatever it is it is a 
 good thing. 
 
 This being the substance of the average American voter's political knowl- 
 edge, no statesman whose views differ materially from this fundamental creed 
 can be sent either to Springfield or Washington. Our constitutions and this 
 state of public opinion, combined, compel the class of minds which might 
 become statesmen to settle down into feeders of pap, exhibitors of buga 
 boos, and distributors of sugar plums to political babies, i. e., into stump speak- 
 ers. A stumper differs from a statesman as a king's jester differs from a poet 
 laureate. A statesman studies the means which promote the prosperity and 
 welfare of a nation, and advocates them, trusting only to the dignity and 
 truthfulness of his position; but a statesman can have no existence if his 
 recognition as such depends on the ratification of his views by an illiterate 
 peasantry. The speeches of Burke, Fox and Sheridan, on the impeachment of
 
 Stumping and Statesmanship. 47 
 
 Warren Hastings, could never have been made on the stump. The presence 
 of the cultured audience is as essential as that of the orator. A stumper, 
 therefore, studies merely tie tricks of words, the pretty stories, the coarse 
 jests, the hackneyed anecdotes which will flatter his audience into the feeling 
 that they are a god, and that the other political party is the devil, and so will 
 hold and catch votes. A stumper must utter no unwelcome truth, must teach 
 the people nothing, for all new truths offend us, but must tell whatever cru- 
 dity or lie the people already believe, dressing it up in such fine language 
 that the people shall barely recognize it as being the well-dressed echo of 
 what they already think. 
 
 No more skillful or effective utterance was ever made on the stump than 
 Mr. Emory A. Storrs' story of the last campaign, about an inflation of collat- 
 erals. It garnered thousands of votes into the Republican coffers. The com- 
 mittees feared to have Mr. Storrs touch the financial question for fear he 
 would say something, for Storrs is as bright as the best, and if he said what 
 he thought, his horns might demolish the entire china shop. But Storrs knows 
 that sugar plums and soothing syrup are, in squally times, the best things 
 for the infant mind, and that while each individual of the American public, 
 in the specialty to which he had given his life's energies, might be matured 
 and wise, yet that the aggregate judgment of that public, when applied to a 
 subject like statesmanship, to which not one in a hundred thousand had given 
 attention, would be infantile. Thus compelled, the more able a man to be a 
 a statesman, if statesmanship were required, the more certain he is to be a 
 stumper, if only pap and sugar plums for babies are required. 
 
 Here is the Republican party arraigned by its adversaries for having 
 crudely gone to work to force a paper dollar, of which there were say $100,- 
 000,000 in circulation, up from a value of 70 cents each to a value of 100 cents 
 each, in gold, knowing that the process would inevitably involve the reduc- 
 tion of all the other' values in the country, of which this dollar was the pur- 
 chasing agent, by the same percentage of value that was added to the paper 
 dollar. By whatever distance the scale containing the dollar rises, the scale 
 containing the commodities which buy the dollar must fall. There are 
 $35,000,000,000 of values to be reduced 30 per cent,, and $700,000,000 values 
 to be raised 30 per cent,, $12,000.000,000 of values are to be taken out of the 
 other property in the, country, in order that the instrument of exchange by 
 which those values are measured may be made worth 30 per cent,, or $300,- 
 000,000 more. It was the repetition of the graceful idea of keeping the goose 
 that we are roasting stationary, and having the stove and the fire and the 
 house revolve around it: or as if in the old times, when the king's foot was 
 the standard of measurement, the nation had come upon a king whose foot, 
 though very graceful and useful otherwise, was only seven inches long, and 
 had devoted five years to gradually pulling his foot out to the requisite length. 
 Had a merchant discovered that his yard stick was too short, he would have 
 retired it and substituted another of full length, or if his pound weight was 
 too small, he would throw it under the counter and substitute another of full 
 size. So Russia and Austria, finding, twenty years after their wars with
 
 48 Responsible Government. 
 
 Napoleon had ended, that the paper currency of the one was worth but 24 per 
 cent, of its face and that of the other but 60 per cent., both provided for retir- 
 ing the old currency and substituting a new one worth par from the date of its 
 issue, and for the payment of all debts in the old currency which were incur- 
 red in the old, or if payment were made in the new currency, then reducing 
 the nominal amount so as to maintain the equation of actual values, and not 
 make the debtor pay the creditor from 40 to 70 per cent, more value than he 
 had agreed to pay. In this way these two effete monarchies resumed specie 
 payments in a month, without deranging the values of all the property in 
 both empires, or so much as disturbing the price of a pea nut to the value of a 
 hair, without making the fire and the residence revolve around the goose that 
 was being cooked, and without placing the foot of the sovereign people in the 
 vise and rack, and pulling it out amidst the groans and yells of the suffering 
 sovereign, from a length of seven inches to a length of twelve inches. But 
 the glorious Republican and Democratic parties raise too much brains to the 
 acre to care for any financial examples afforded by the effete despotisms of the 
 old world, and so they combine to resume by a plan which will set all the 
 values in the country toppling and falling like rows of bricks upon each other, 
 so that production will be as nearly paralyzed as human ingenuity can render 
 possible, by the fact that for years every product will continue to sell for less 
 than the cost of producing it; for the Republican and Democratic parties com- 
 bined had resolved, as a political truism, that the dollar, with which all other 
 things were purchased, might be given a purchasing power relatively to all 
 other things of 30 per cent, more, without any other thing losing any part of 
 its power to purchase dollars. Hence, production was palsied, capital fled 
 into the bank vaults with terror, labor roamed on the highways, fools every- 
 where talked finance, and the busiest bees in the bucket were the registers in 
 bankruptcy and the hangmen. While the wind that resulted in the whirlwind 
 was being sown, the Democratic party had its cheeks as- full of wind as the 
 Republican. But when the whirlwind came, then the Democratic party, like 
 Adam of old, pointed to the woman and said: "The Republican party she did 
 take, and gave to me, and I did eat also." In this dilemma, what the cam- 
 paign committees want is soothing syrup. The Great American Baby has been 
 having his foot stretched by the medical bears, and Mr. Storrs must explain 
 to the dear, great, vast body politic, with the dear, small, little, tiny brain 
 inside of it, that it mustn't kick the doctor up to where corn is worth $2 a 
 bushel, nor upset the nurse, but must just open its little mouth and shut its 
 little eyes, and receive from the Hon. and eloquent Emory A. Storrs something 
 that will make it witty, and wealthy, and wise. 
 
 Then Mr. Storrs begins by telling the Great American Baby that he, 
 Storrs, don't know anything about finance, which makes the baby feel com- 
 fortable, for the baby don't know anything about it either, and don't want to. 
 Then Storrs tells the Great American Baby that he has been trying to borrow, 
 and the baby now loves Storrs truly and deeply, because the baby has been 
 trying to borrow an extra pair of lungs to howl with while the medical bears 
 were stretching its foot. "Now," says Storrs, "I went to Coolbaugh, which
 
 Popular Soothing Syrup. 49 
 
 being interpreted means Banker, and asked him if there was plenty of money 
 to lend. Coolbaugh answered, 'slathers of it.'" Thereupon, the Great Amer- 
 ican Baby sweetly opens its dear, little, tiny eyes, and wonders how it could have 
 hurt so to stretch its financial foot, when the banks all had plenty of liniment 
 in their vaults, and modestly asks Mr. Storrs why it didn't get the benefit of 
 any of the all-healing ointment. "Just the point," says Storrs. " I asked 
 him for some of it about $5000 would do and Coolbaugh asked me for my 
 collateral." Here the Great American Baby, with a precocious stare, asks if 
 "collateral'" is the bottle that keeps the ointment from spilling, "Just what I 
 asked Coolbaugh/' says Storrs. " Coolbaugh told me it was- grain certificates 
 receipts for grain deposited by me in the elevators. Then, says I to Cool- 
 baugh, if I owned grain deposited in an elevator, and which I could. sell for 
 cash fit any moment, or anything else that I could sell, would I come here to 
 borrow ? " " So," said Storrs to the Great American Baby, "I found there was 
 plenty of money for all persons who have plenty of corn in the elevators. 
 Ergo," says Storrs, "the article in which we need inflation is corn and other 
 collaterals, not currency. People who have got plenty of corn can get plenty 
 of money, 'and people who don't own any corn, don't need any." Thereupon, 
 the Great American Baby looked sweetly and confidingly np into the eyes of 
 the Republican party, and gently murmuring. "Let Storrs, Hayes, Tom Jones 
 or the devil run the country, its all one to me," went to sleep. 
 
 That is the best stump speech ever made, because the most powerfully 
 sedative. If it has any rival, it would be the case of Nero fiddling while Rome 
 was burning. 
 
 Institutions in which there is no better sorting of men for public office than 
 that which can be made by the people in their primitive mass-meeting capac- 
 ity, compel all candidates for office to be of the stamper grade they must 
 consecrate their lives to humbug. The same fate which would befall our other 
 trades requiring special skill, if the men who are to manage them were to be 
 selected in town meeting, (and all universal suffrage is an enlarged town 
 meeting,) befalls statesmanship. Suppose the question who were to run 
 Giles' Bros, jewelry store next year, or Field & Leiter's dry goods store, or 
 John Wentworth's farm, were put to popular vote, and Timothy Cronan, non- 
 tax-payer, should take the place of Giles Bros. & Co., and bring the experience 
 he had acquired in dredging to the sale of diamonds; could you trust the dia- 
 monds you were buying there any longer, or would not fraud be written over 
 every counter? Suppose that, by the universal suffrage of South Chicago, the 
 conduct of Field & Leiter's business could be transferred to some very intelli- 
 gent politician, say to sheriff Kern, how would this kind of rotation affect the 
 skill, how would the perpetual necessity of pretending to comprehend what 
 they did not, affect the honesty with which the business would be conducted? 
 
 Statesmanship is the crowning achievement of human society the adap- 
 tation of the largest experience, genius and learning to the comprehension 
 of the wants of the grandest nation, when upheld and represented by hundreds 
 of its foremost minds. It can not be the work of one man alone, nor can it 
 emanate from, or be be inspired by, an uninstructed mass of ignorant men,
 
 50 Responsible Government. 
 
 though they number by countless millions. No possible aggregation of igno- 
 rance, however extended or unanimous, becomes wisdom. The very nation in 
 which it is to be exhibited must form an arena worthy of its power. It must 
 rise towards its pinnacle, upheld by the support of a vast, aristocracy of intel- 
 lect and of merit. Each person who assumes to fill a niche in its temple, 
 must devote his life to the sublime st.udy of the true wants, weaknesses, 
 interests, powers, needs, capacities and forces which combine to constitute 
 the mighty sweep and current of the nation's being; to the great work of 
 amending individual judgments by exhibiting to them a judgment more com- 
 prehensive and more nearly universal; and of reconciling the conflict of in- 
 terest and passion which disturbs the superficial minds that are delving for 
 ores around the base of life's vast altitudes, by towering above them into the 
 eternal spaces where law makes known its unity, and undisturbed philoso- 
 phy and reason forever reign. 
 
 Human law is the correction of individual errors, by conforming human 
 conduct to the higher reason of the aggregate of cultured minds. Statesman- 
 ship is the reconciliation of social conflicts of interest and passion, by unfold- 
 ing to the contending parties the broader view wherein is always discernible 
 the harmony of interests. Think you that such a work requires less prepara- 
 tion than to make a watch or to sell a diamond? No man is fit to make a law 
 on any subject who does not know what the legislation and adjudication on 
 that subject for 2500 years have been, and their effects. No man is fit to pro- 
 pose a public policy who has not made the observation of public policies in all 
 nations his study, and the evolution of public policies in his own country both 
 his study and his profession. And yet we regard a nomination to Congress as 
 a thing that any successful seller of tape can have snt to his door, like his 
 green groceries, if he pays for it. 
 
 The highest forms of statesmanship must be in part inherited. All their 
 materials can not be matured in one generation. The -William Pitt who over- 
 threw Napoleon would have lacked the force of will at sixty, had he been 
 required to wait until that period for the opportunity, and he would have 
 Lacked the opportunity at twenty-five, had he been compelled to crowd up be- 
 tween the people as a stumper. Therefore, Democratic institutions can pro- 
 duce no William Pitts, because they supply no Lord Clvathams. whose prestige 
 can lift their sons at twenty-five into opportunities of statesmanship. A cen- 
 tury of the American Republic has never produced one political leader who 
 was also, like Macauley, a historian, or like Lord Derby, a classic scholar, 
 or like Disraeli, a leader also in the world of letters and in the social world. 
 Nor could the present Disraeli have attained this three-fold mastery over 
 society, over literature and over politics, if required to work his way upward 
 on the American stump. Three generations were required to produce such 
 a success: the first, by accumulating the wealth, rescued him from the neces- 
 sity of devoting his life to the lower ambitions; the second, by accumulating 
 the scholarship, endowed him early with what other men had done. The 
 present Disraeli's success began where that of his sire left off. The qualities 
 which would enable him to fill the three-fold position, viz: those of gentleman,
 
 The Reign of the Stumpers. 51 
 
 scholar, and man of genius, would shut him out of a seat in any one of our 
 State Legislntures. Being a gentleman, he would not solicit or barter for or 
 buy the votes of the political bummers and strikers of his district, without 
 which he could not receive the nomination. Being a scholar, his opinions 
 would sever him from sympathy with the crudities of which the political 
 ignorance of the mass of the voters of his district would consist, and he could 
 not represent them without being on their plane. Being a man of genius, he 
 would perceive, clearly, how futile was the effort to make a government by 
 the lower classes result in a wise government, and would have nothing to do 
 with it, unless it were in the capacity of a revolutionist. 
 
 The reign of the race of stumpers, the product of American institutions, 
 began with the war of 1812, prior to which the country, in gratitude for the 
 aid received from royal and aristocratic France, in 1778, under King Louis, 
 LaFayette and Rochambeau, had broken out into a fervor of sympathy with 
 the French Republic, under Robespierre, Marat, and Danton, which culminated 
 in rendering' us allies to the Napoleonic despotism, for which we fought under 
 the banner of free ships, until its overthrow compelled us to receive peace at 
 the hands of the allied powers of Europe; though most Americans, for fifty 
 years afterward, thought that, the battle of New Orleans, fought five weeks 
 after the treaty of peace was signed, settled the conflict. Our next conspicu- 
 ous act of infatuation and stumperism was the beginning, made in 1820, and 
 continued until 1860, in treating the slavery question sentimentally and pas- 
 sionately on both sides, like a mob or a nest of fishwives, while the Czars of 
 Russia were treating it coolly, dispassionately and economically, forecasting, 
 by their legislation, as early as 1828 to 1830, the final abolition of the slavery 
 of four and a half times as many slaves as disturbed our peace; so that while 
 we precipitated emancipation on the subject race unadvisedly, at a cost of 
 half the values in the country, to-wit: of 9,000,000,000, and of 1,000,000 lives, 
 Russia perfected a greater result advisedly and gradually, without the cost of 
 a dollar or a sigh. 
 
 The crushing, under Andrew Jackson, of the United States Bank, founded 
 by Hamilton, and the subsequent war against institutions of credit and against 
 credit itself, are exactly on a par with the North American Indian's hostility 
 to fences, farms, herds and all private property. The Indian hates a farm as 
 he does a telegraph pole, because it expresses something he don't understand, 
 and Jackson, the Indian fighter, just one grade in advance of the Indian in 
 statesmanship,, and no more, hated a bank for the same reason, because he was 
 as densely ignorant of political science as an Indian is of electric science. 
 
 For twenty-five years the force of our nation has been expended in proving 
 that the majority of the people in one section can play the Caesar over a minor- 
 ity in another, and hold them within their grasp, however unitedly they may 
 wish themselves out of it, may abolish their institutions and constitutions, and 
 revolutionize their social life, without giving any other explanation of the 
 reason than that, they have the power, t. e., without attempting to show that 
 such an exercise of authority redounds to the greatest good, either of the con-
 
 52 Responsible Government. 
 
 quered people or of the conquerors. To all these results stumperism is fully 
 equal, and statesmanship is not requisite. 
 
 Imagine the ascendency of capital in the Legislature of Great Britain taken 
 away, by abolishing the House of Lords and delivering the country over to 
 universal suffrage, and the same war upon the banks, capital, credit and 
 finances of the country, which has occurred here, would transpire there, for 
 the class of men who are ignorant of political economy make war on all forms 
 of public and private credit, as instinctively as the Chinese oppose railroads, 
 or the Indian, fences. By destroying the security of capital they would send 
 rates of interest up to 8 to 12 per cent., would destroy England's ascendency 
 in manufactures and finance, and would reduce her in a few years to a Repub- 
 lic without external possessions, and numbering, perhaps, half her present 
 population. 
 
 The people who have exhibited a greater genius for government than any 
 other in history, were the Roman. For eight hundred years they ruled the 
 political world, virtually giving rise to both ancient and modern civilization. 
 So long as the Roman aristocracy, through the representation of capital in her 
 system of voting, were able to counteract the folly of the alien mob of people 
 of all nations which came under their sway, Rome ruled herself and the world. 
 Her demoralization and downfall as a political power were directly the result 
 of withdrawing power from capital and giving it to numbers; and as if on 
 purpose to demonstrate that the Roman aristocracy still retained its vigor 
 when it had lost its control over the State, it transferred its control to the 
 church, and under the name of Italian Cardinals the same Roman blood has 
 swayed Christendom for sixteen centuries, and now, with a-vigor as of peren- 
 nial youth, rules the consciences of 180,000,000 souls. The key to this ruler- 
 ship is to be found in the fact that Rome, both in its secular and religious 
 empire, governed from above downwards, impressing the genius and will of 
 the capable upon the dullness and inertia of the incapable. Twenty-five years 
 of government from the people upwards, by universal suffrage, the pews ruling 
 the priests and the priests the bishops, would demolish the Roman Church as 
 it did the Roman State. 
 
 In the Republic of Rome there were three modes of voting, which distin- 
 guished, respectively, the .infancy, the ascendency and the decay of the State. 
 In the eai-liest mode, known as the Comitia Curiala, only the patricians or aris- 
 tocracy voted, but the vote of one patrician was equal to that of another, as in 
 the British House of Lords. From that, Rome passed to the more complex vote 
 by centuries, known as the Comitia Centuriata. The people were divided at 
 the census into six classes, according to their wealth. As the purchasing 
 power of Roman money can not be accurately expressed in modern money, 
 it may be proximately accurate to say that all worth upwards of $1,000.000 
 were in the first class, and had thirty-five parts in a hundred of the voting 
 power of the State, and furnished thirty-five hundredths of the army and the 
 treasury. Those worth less than $1,000,000, and more than $500,000, were 
 in the second class, and furnished one-quarter of the army and of the revenue, 
 and enjoyed one-quarter of the voting power. An absolute union of the first
 
 Mr. Calhoun's System. 53 
 
 and second classes, therefore, could carry any measure, and the vote of the 
 other classes needed not to be taken. If, however, a vote of the first and 
 second classes failed to exhibit a majority of the whole, then the third class, 
 worth say $100,000, or the fourth, worth $50,000, or the fifth, worth $10,000, or 
 the sixth, worth SoOO, would be consulted. In practice, the 500 class was 
 seldom consulted, and I think it is literally true that the votes of persons who 
 have never been able to accumulate $500 in property, upon any question of 
 State policy, may safely be taken last. 
 
 Under no system of government has the "inseparability of taxation and 
 representation been preserved and vindicated in so logical, perfect and mas- 
 terly a way as in this Roman system of voting by centuries. The right, to 
 cast a certain voting power, grew out of the possession of a corresponding 
 amount of assessed capital, and carried with it inseparably the obligation to 
 contribute a corresponding ratio of the army and the revenue. It was this 
 identity of taxation and representation, this system of voting by centuries, 
 which advanced Rome to be the ruler of the world. 
 
 The third system of voting, known as voting by tribes, or Comitia Tributa, 
 admitted the plebeians, freedmen, aliens and uon-property-holders to vote on 
 an equality with the aristocracy, whereupon, of course, the aristocracy stopped 
 voting altogether, and the crazy Roman mob were the saddled asses on which 
 the Caesars rode into power; thus making universal suffrage, when divested of 
 the counteracting influence of capital, the stepping stone to the complete aboli- 
 tion of all suffrage, and the subversion of the Republic by the Empire, which, 
 in its turn, was ground to powder between barbaric force and religious super- 
 stition. But to the end of time it will stand recorded that the ascendency of 
 the Roman race, as well as of the British, over the world, (and they have been 
 the two governing races of the world,) has been due to the joint ascendency 
 given to capital and numbers in their constitutions or as Mr. Calhoun would 
 express it, to the fact that their constitutions secured the concurrent assent 
 of the majority of property, as well as of the majority of polls, to all policies. 
 
 On this subject no American statesman has thought to any purpose, so far 
 as I am aware, except Mr. Calhouu, in his celebrated disquisition on Govern- 
 ment. He may. perhaps, have been led to think of it by the reflection that the 
 peculiar form of capital in which the wealth of the South was so largely in- 
 vested, viz: slave capital, would be that which a despotism of mere numbers 
 would be the first to abolish, whereas, had the capital of the country had a 
 veto on the action of numbers, there can be no doubt that the extinction of 
 slavery, instead of being the subject of a sentimental, passionate and bloody 
 war, would have been as gradual and peaceful in this country as in Russia, 
 and would have occurred! just as fast, and no faster, than the pecuniary inter- 
 ests of both the master and the slave would have combined to render it mutu- 
 ally desirable, and the 1,000,000 men lost in abolishing it would have been 
 alive, and the $9,000,000,000 spent in destroying it would have been saved. 
 Whatever were Mr. Calhoun's inducements to reflect upon the insecurity of 
 capital under a despotism of mere numbers, he took the ground in his re- 
 markable disquisition on Government, that governments are constitutional and
 
 54 Responsible Government. 
 
 enduring only when they combine the concurring majorities of each of the 
 distinct forces which go to make up the power of society. If the priesthood 
 and religion really govern society, as they do in Turkey, Italy, Spain and 
 Mexico, then they will have power enough to overturn any State in which 
 they are not represented. If the landholders are the chief social force, as in 
 Germany, France and England, then a government which ignores the land- 
 holders, and rests, for instance, on the priests, must fall or give place to one 
 in which the landholders are represented. If the army and the aristocracy 
 are the chief forces in the State, as they were in Rome, then their ascendency 
 must be acknowledged in the constitution, or they will overthrow the constitu- 
 tion which ignores them. And finally, if the church, and the army, and the 
 landholders and capitalists, all cease to be a force in the State, as they do in 
 communities where capital is equally diffused, and there are a hundred sects, 
 and no standing army exists, there numbers become a ruling power, and any 
 constitution which fails to respect them will fall. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun defined a despotism as being a government which attempted 
 to rule society exclusively by one of its forces, whether such force were the 
 church, the army, the landholders, or mere numbers, i. e., the mob. He defined 
 a constitutional government as one which provided for gathering up and rep- 
 resenting the views of each of the ruling forces of the State in a co-ordinate 
 branch of the Legislature, in such a manner as to give to its united voice a 
 veto on the action of the other forces of the State. If numbers, therefore, were 
 represented in the lower branch of a State Legislature, and capital in the upper, 
 he called this a government by concurring majorities, i. e., the majority or 
 voice of numbers concurring with the majority or voice of capital; whereas, 
 if numbers merely elected both branches of the Legislature, the government 
 not having provided itself with any machinery by which it could take the 
 views or listen to the voice of capital, would be, as to capital, a hostile, un- 
 compromising despotism, deaf to the voice of persuasion, and can'ying out all 
 its decrees by force. Mr. Calhoun pointed out, very clearly, the tendency 
 which the majority would have, not only to tyrannize over the minority, but 
 to vest so large a share of power in its individual chieftain, the President for 
 instance, as would expand his powers into those of an Emperor, while still 
 wearing the title of a President, and would enable him to override both the 
 will of the Legislature, of the judiciary, of his constitutional advisers, and of 
 his own party. The careers of Andrew Jackson, of Abraham Lincoln, of 
 Andrew Johnson, and of Mr. Hayes, illustrated, with different results, this 
 tendency of the leader to absorb in himself the despotic power accorded to 
 his party. Jackson, of his individual will, abolished the bank. Lincoln, of 
 his individual will, inaugurated the war for the Union, and converted it into 
 a war for emancipation. Johnson attempted to reconstruct the South without 
 consulting Congress or the people, and was defeated. But Hayes, of his indi- 
 vidual will, released the South from further Federal subjugation. 
 
 It will thus be seen, that, according to Mr. Calhoun's definition, our State 
 governments are all unconstitutional despotisms, in which both political par- 
 ties combined, and the entire State government, represent but one of the forces
 
 How Capital should Vote. 55 
 
 of society, there being no provision for affording an authoritative expression 
 to either capital, or culture, or character, or experience. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun did not intimate that he thought, there were any other forces 
 in American society so strong as to need representation in our forms of gov- 
 ernment, except those of numbers and capital, nor did he outline the system 
 of voting, either by the people or in the Legislature, whereby the representa- 
 tion of capital, concurrently with numbers, could best be secured. The modes 
 of representing capital, either in Europe -or in the Republics of Greece 
 and Rome, are not fitted to deserve favor here. The nobleman in the 
 English House of Lords is in no strict sense a representative of any body's 
 capital but his own, nor are his sympathies identified with the interests of 
 that portion of the capital of the country invested in manufactures, banking 
 or trade, except as some of his tenants may be manufacturers, bankers or 
 traders, but only with that portion invested in land. This has made the Brit- 
 ish House of Lords, while a politic, compromisiug, and adroit, yet, in the 
 main, a narrow, bigoted, and unrepresentative body, and has caused the 
 power to pass from it to the House of Commons, whereas, if the House of Lords 
 were so re-organized as to represent, logically and by proxy, the entire capital 
 of the country, it would speedily return to an equality in influence with the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 We are now prepared to outline the mode in which, in American Legisla- 
 tures, representation might be given to capital. Let every State and city in 
 this country, for the purpose of electing the upper branch of its Legislature, 
 be treated as a financial corporation, for such in fact it is, in which the inte- 
 gral unit to be voted upon, corresponding to a share in the corporation, is the 
 dollar of taxable property. Let every man cast a vote corresponding either 
 to the number of dollars on which he pays taxes, or if the taxing system should 
 be changed, as it probably would under such a method, from a tax on capital 
 to a tax on incomes and earnings, then to the amount of taxes he pays. Thus 
 much would be fundamental. The other details would be matters of expediency. 
 If the representation of the majority, only, of capital were deemed expedient, 
 then a prescribed number of members would be voted for, and a prescribed 
 amount of capital must vote for each member to perfect his election. The 
 entire capital of the State being a trifle over 52,000,000,000, if the number of 
 members were fifty, then each member elected would have to be voted for by 
 a little more than one-fiftieth of 1,000,000,000, or by 20,000,000. If majori- 
 ties of capital only are sought to be represented, as they are of numbers, the 
 members of the house representing capital might be elected at one time, and 
 serve for a given period, as our present members representing numbers are 
 and do. If, on the other hand, instead of the majority of capital only being 
 represented in the Legislature, it is preferred that the whole capital of the 
 State should be represented, then there might be no prescribed number of 
 members in the upper house. Every tax-paper might be left free to vote in 
 person or by proxy, for the instances in which they would care to vote in per- 
 son would be very few, ard the weight of the vote of a single tax-payer would 
 be very small in a body in which the entire capital of the State voted.
 
 56 Responsible Government. 
 
 Suppose, for instance, that all the railroads in the State, combined, should 
 send their proxies to one member, he would cast a vote for $130,000,000 of 
 property, in a body wherein die other tax-payers, mostly agricultural, would 
 c&st a vote on $1,870,000,000, the railroads having about one-fourteenth of the 
 power in the capitalist branch of the Legislature. Who believes that the 
 railroads of Illinois, Pennsylvania or New York, where they have no legiti- 
 mate representation at all, and their only weapon is bribery, do not wield a 
 power greater than one-fourteenth of the aggregate political power of the 
 State? The power they attain unrepresented, by corruption, is far greater 
 than th,e power they are legitimately entitled to; but as at present purchased, 
 it is a power which will be exercised more and more each year by local Illi- 
 nois and New York railroad rings, to rob both the people of the State and the 
 foreign stockholders in these railroads. 
 
 But to return. If the entire capital of the State, and not merely the 
 majority of capital, is designed to be represented, then each tax-payer 
 should have the privilege of voting, either in person or by proxy. There 
 would be no general election of members of the upper house, but proxies 
 might be forwarded to the book-keeper of the Senate, by mail or other- 
 wise, as checks are sent in to a bank, each proxy authorizing a given 
 person to cast the vote of a given tax-payer, in form thus: "John Smith, 
 Chicago, votes for Richard Roe, of Springfield, for Senator; taxable property, 
 $20,000." The book-keeper of the Senate would make up each day or week 
 the account current of each member and of all the proxies, verifying it, as to 
 the right of the voter to vote on the amount of capital which he purported to 
 vote upon, by the returns which would be required to be forwarded each year 
 by the assessors and collectors of taxes of towns to the State comptroller, 
 showing the amount of taxes paid during the preceding fiscal year by every 
 tax-payer in the State. Each member voting would not, as in the British 
 House of Lords, cast a vote equal to any other, but he w"ould cast the vote of 
 the property represented by the sum of his proxies, whether it were $1,000,000 
 or $500,000,000. Theoretically, therefore, if the entire property of the State 
 chose to vest in one individual the power of a veto on the action of the mere 
 numerical majority, it could do so, but it would be very unlikely to vest such 
 a power, except in some person whose single judgment would be unimpeach- 
 able. And, on the other hand, should a member lose the confidence of his con- 
 stituency, they could, by the next morning's mail, forward the proxies hereto- 
 fore held by him to a new or another member, and so, in a day, retire from 
 power the one who had proved recreant to his trust. Such a system would 
 involve some book-keeping, but the quantity would be insignificant compared 
 with that of a bank or clearing-house, and, as a result, the entire capital of 
 the State would each moment be represented by a member responsible, from 
 day to day, to his constituency. Compared with such a system for the repre- 
 sentation of capital, the British House of Lords is as clumsy and antiquated 
 as a Mexican plow, and even the Roman method of voting by centuries was 
 less logical.
 
 Witt the American People desire it. 57 
 
 The representation of capital would practically accomplish most of the re- 
 sults which would be reaped from a representation of culture and character, 
 yet it would be quite practicable to give a representation to the latter. It 
 might consist, in part, in regarding certain degrees of official experience, and 
 certain classes of services rendered to science and literature, as the equivalent 
 (for voting purposes) of a given amount of property. Such, in outline, would be 
 Mr. Calhoun's system of government by concurrent majorities. What would 
 be the popular objections to it may be easily conceived. "It would create a 
 House of Lords in every State," says one. "It would increase the inequalities 
 of society," says another, "making the rich richer and the poor poorer," says 
 a third. "It would breakdown the common school system," says a fourth' 
 " for the property holders would never vote the taxes necessary to educate the 
 poor." " Why, the women and the corporations would vote away our liberties," 
 says the hiccoughing statesman from " Biler avenue." 
 
 The best way to overcome these objections is to let them die. Answering 
 them keeps the life in them. They are exactly of the character of the objections 
 which the American Indians entertain to fences, to private property, and to the 
 monopoly every man and woman asserts to the exclusive possession of his or 
 her own scalp. 
 
 It. is idle, however, to suggest, as a possible reform, any change in our body 
 politic if the change involves for its feasibility conditions which do not exist 
 in our body politic. We might as well descant on an improvement in the 
 health of our planet which is to be brought about by transferring to it the at- 
 mosphere of the planet Saturn, as to discuss some renovation of American in- 
 stitutions, which the American people, or a majority of them, can not be induced 
 .to desire. But it is not safe to affirm too positively in advance what the 
 American people can or can not be induced to desire. Two years before the 
 Southern States were reconstructed on the basis of impartial suffrage 
 and equal political rights, as between the two races, a distinguished U. S. 
 Senator and Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, whose judgment as to the 
 condition and progress of public sentiment was as accurate as that of any 
 politician or statesman extant, informed me that he had conferred personally 
 with all the men whose votes were necessary to reconstruct the South on the 
 basis of negro suffrage and equal political rights, and that not one of them 
 would vote for it under any conditions. I replied that I thought the course of 
 events would oblige them all to vote for it within two years, including him- 
 self, and they all did. I have known American statesmen who would tele- 
 graph in great haste from Washington to Chicago one week that a certain 
 policy was not to be advocated, as it would ruin the party and the country, and 
 would take the very next train for Chicago in order to get here in time to ad- 
 dress a mass meeting in Court House Square in favor of the same policy, and 
 this, not once, but frequently. He who would foresee what public opinion will be 
 five, ten or fifty years hence, can not learn it from the clamor of to-day's mob 
 on the streets, nor from the talk of traders and bankers. He must grasp the 
 wants and needs of society, and judge from the laws of demand and supply, 
 which govern the rise of institutions as they do the price of wheat. The pro-
 
 58 Responsible Government. 
 
 gress of a nation toward wealth implies a wide and ever increasing diffei-en- 
 tiation of fortunes and large accumulations of capital under single control. 
 This process is rapidly going on in America and is already creating aggrega- 
 tions of capital too powerful to submit to the despotism of a communistic vot- 
 ing system which is liable at any moment to endanger or abolish any form of 
 private property or credit against which the cry of demagogues may direct the 
 passions on the cupidity of the mob. 
 
 1 concede that the representation of capital as a distinct integral force in 
 the State, worthy to counteract the impetuosity and ignorance of mere numbers, 
 will not be brought about until one or the other of the two political parties, contend- 
 ing for the government of the country on the basis of mere numbers, shall be 
 driven to advocate it as the means of either atta nirig to power or maintaining 
 itself in power. It was from this motive that the Democratic party opened the 
 gates of the constitution to the alien, and the Republican party opened the 
 same gates to the negro. Will any political party ever find it necessary to the 
 maintenance of its hold on power to open the gates of the constitution to the 
 tax-payer? If not, the tax-payer will never be represented, and all political 
 parties will continue to hold the fundamentally rotten proposition which now 
 underlies our State constitution: that A, B and C, being the majority, can 
 divide the garment of D among them and cast lots for his vesture, because they 
 outnumber him. In the Northern States, the Republican party, by its antece- 
 dents and proclivities, would be most likely to become the champion of capital, 
 for several reasons, viz: first, that at present by far the greater majority of 
 its voters are tax-payers, and the actual and relative power of the men who 
 now constitute the bone and sinew of the Republican party would be increased 
 five fold by the measure. Secondly, the measure would draw to the Republican 
 party the vast majority of the capitalists of the large cities who, either by the 
 free trade or pro-slavery proclivities of the Democratic party, have been Demo- 
 crats. The country is liable at any moment to drift into- an exigency wherein 
 the Republican party, driven to the wall, could only, by becoming the cham- 
 pion of the square and honest representation of capital in one branch of every 
 Legislature and of every city council, recover its position and maintain itself 
 in power. And now thirdly, the tendencies towai-d agrarian, socialistic and 
 communistic legislation are such that its antidote, the representation of capital) 
 has got to be discussed. However much we may deprecate it, one or the 
 other of the two political parties will be driven to it, and in the Northern 
 States that party will be likely to be the Republican at the South, the 
 Democratic. The scum of society would meet the proposition with a howl at 
 first, and 1 would threaten its advocates with the lamp post and with assassi- 
 nation. But the votes of one-half of this scum could be bought, in its favor 
 for $10 each, and without the votes of any of them the measure could be car- 
 ried if the tax-payers unite upon it. In our city governments, which, under 
 our present system, are a rude and barbarous failure, the representation of 
 capital in one branch of- the city council would be of inestimable value. In 
 the city of London, where the property qualification prevails, no member of 
 the Board of Aldermen has'ever allowed his note to go to protest, arid in the
 
 The Influence of Capital. 59 
 
 city of Liverpool the bankruptcy of a member of the Board of Aldermen va- 
 cates his seat. But New York and Chicago have been governed ever since 
 they were cities by bankrupts whose names often are not to be found in the 
 city directory, still less on the tax list, and the circumstance of one not. a 
 bankrupt serving in the city council would be regarded as a capital joke. The 
 Chicago Times, last fall, published the amount of taxes paid by all the mem- 
 bers of the Cook County Democratic County and Congressional Convention 
 at about $27, and all those paid by the Republican Convention at less than 70. 
 All the men whose votes disposed of the elective offices for 500,000 people did 
 not pay S100 of taxes. Hence, New York never knows, within from 520,000,000 
 to $40.000,000, how much her debt is, and Chicago never knows how much of 
 her debt is valid. Both cities are governed by their vagabonds. In the South- 
 ern States the Democratic party are the natural defenders of the righls of 
 capital, and while there would be nothing in such a measure which would tend 
 to disfranchise any man on account of color, the concurrent representation 
 of capital with numbers would rid every Southern State of all fear of negro 
 domination until such time as the blacks should attain to a considerable share 
 of the capital of the State. Indeed, under this system, the upper branch of any 
 Southern State Legislature would be necessarily white, or white with the excep- 
 tion of one member, as the entire tax-paying capital owned by negroes in any 
 State, except Louisiana, if concentrated upon one candidate, would be hardly 
 or barely sufficient to elect him. 
 
 Capital seeks permanency and skill, and abhors change and incompetency. 
 The representation of capital would impart permanency to the profession of 
 the statesman, and when adopted in conjunction with executive responsibility, 
 it would demand and develop skill. Intelligent minds in all ages have agreed 
 that an aristocratic form of government developed the highest deliberative 
 capacity and executive skill. It was supposed . by many that democracy in 
 government was conducive to honesty, but our American experiment has ex- 
 ploded all that and shown that democracy is only conducive to honesty when 
 it is counteracted by an aristocratic influence. All the unfortunate tendencies 
 to misgovernment which I have traced as the direct result of the non-represen- 
 tation of capital would be cured by its representation. Dishonesty would be 
 eliminated from politics, for nothing but dishonesty can logically be expected 
 from a system in which robbery is the chief corner-stone. Dignity would be 
 restored to politics, for nothing but vulgarity can be expected from a system 
 which fails to recognize the very first quality of virtue cognizable by the 
 human conscience, viz: the virtue of the man who acquires, relatively to the 
 vice of him who merely and frivolously dissipates. Our institutions, for the 
 first time in our history, would be founded upon justice, for there is no justice 
 in confiscation nor in unqualified communism. We should be able to retain in 
 the public service statesmen who ventured to draw their inspiration from higher 
 sources than the clamor of the liquor saloons, and the scarcely more intelligent 
 clamor of a superficial and often venal press. In conjunction with a responsible 
 system of government, by dissolvable legislatures and resignable ministries, it 
 would eliminate from our political system the p^n-erof the caucus and the con-
 
 60 Responsible Government. 
 
 vent ion, those great conspicuous shams which overtower all the minor forms of 
 American incompetency and knavery. It would introduce into our social fabric 
 that due antagonism of centrifugal and centripetal forces, of capital and labor, 
 of aristocracy and democracy, which are but illustrations of the divine truth that 
 all enduring forms of action, all forces which contain the elements of perpetuity, 
 all constitutions which are to outlast the centuries, all laws which are to range 
 in harmony with the infinite unity of la*,v, must be, not the mere expression of a 
 solitary force, but the result of a union of antagonistic forces. For the unity of 
 law is as perfect in politics as in chemistry. Oxygen without nitrogen is 
 death. Nitrogen without oxygen is death. No two substances antagonize 
 each other more powerfully or unite more firmly. So of gravitation and 
 cohesion, matter and soul, liberty and law, and so finally of capital and labor, 
 of aristocracy and democracy. If a. divine truth underlies the statement that 
 no government can be permanent in which these two principles are not jointly 
 represented if a government by mere numbers is inherently as much a des- 
 potism as a government by one then he who advocates this divine truth need 
 not wait long for its apprehension. He is at best but a yard or two in advance 
 of the mighty tread of the millions. 
 
 For humanity sweeps onward. Where to-day the martyr stands, 
 On the morrow crouches Judas, with the silver in his hands. 
 In the van the stake is ready and the lurid faggot burns, 
 While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe returns, 
 And gathers up the scattered ashes into history's golden urns. 
 I humbly trust we are approaching an epoch of Constitutional Invention, 
 Investigation and Reform. The deep distrust, profound, restless and danger- 
 ous as the heavings of the ocean in its wrath, which pervades American soci- 
 ety in all its highths and depths, indicates that we are living in a period 
 wherein fetich worship is dead, and the constitutions bequeathed to us by our 
 ancestors must be judged like the trees, by their fruits, like the mechanism, 
 by the harmony and fitness with which it accomplishes an excellent and 
 perfect result. To the examination of such questions we need to bring the 
 broadest and most catholic spirit of scientific investigation, combined with the 
 highest inspiration of patriotic rectitude. We need to study the constitutions 
 of all States, for we may say of constitutions as Goethe says of languages, " who 
 does not know another, does not know his own." Let us expunge from public 
 opinion that narrow stupidity which, instead of welcoming suggestions from 
 every hand, says to the critic of our institutions, as but a few years ago it 
 said to those who criticised slavery in America: "If you like other govern- 
 ments better, go and live under them." As if any class could do more honor 
 to America than those who try to make it what it ought to be. None are 
 competent for the work who are not willing to borrow from each nation and 
 period every excellence which American institutions can receive, even as 
 the religious Roman thought not his pantheon complete so long~as the traveler 
 from any clime failed to find there the god he worshiped. As a true American, 
 I cannot rest so long as any excellence pertaining to any government or state 
 of society is wanting in my offci.
 
 DRIFTING TOWARD COMMUNISM ; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE TENDENCY OF THE RULE OF NON-TAX- 
 PAYERS TOWARD AGRARIANISM, 
 DIS-UNION AND CIVIL WAR. 
 
 THE first fifty years of our national life were presided over by politicians 
 who were not the product of our institutions, but the authors of them. 
 They had been produced by preceding and mainly English civilization. Only 
 within the last fifty years have our institutions been guided by the men whom 
 they have produced. Now we begin to see their drift, and compare their net 
 results with those produced under more aristocratic conditions. We can now 
 approach our august sovereigns, the People, and discuss with them plainly 
 whether they govern well. Two antagonistic forces compose society, the one 
 called the lower or laboring or democratic or non-capital class, andthe other 
 the capitalist or aristocratic class. In generalizing two forces of such breadth 
 and scope of operation, no name that, could be given them would be just to 
 each of their details. As when liberty and law, or science and religion, or the 
 latter and philosophy are arrayed as antagonistic social and intellectual forces, 
 virtues and crimes attach to each ; truth and error lie involved in both. As the 
 world of force consists of antagonistic forces, so the world of truth consists of 
 the antagonistic intellectual conceptions of these forces, which we call ideas. 
 A truth which purports to generalize many facts into one generic fact or law, 
 is never presented with complete accuracy, until the truth that contradicts it 
 is set down beside it; as the Roman conqueror, returning in triumph, was fol- 
 lowed by two heralds, one of whom proclamed him immortal, and the other 
 warned him that he would die. Neither told him the whole truth, but the two 
 combined, did. 
 
 In the perpetual conflict between aristocracy and communism, each has at 
 times been religious or irreligious, useful or despicable, sane or diseased. No 
 one phase of either is responsible for the sins or deserving of the merit of any 
 other. 
 
 Communism, or the doctrine that all men should enjoy all, or nearly all things 
 in common, is the theory of employing the aggn^ate power of the mass to pro-
 
 62 Responsible Government. 
 
 mote the interest of the individual. It antagonizes individualism, which is the 
 theory that the interests of all are best promoted when each one promotes his own. 
 All private property, so far as it is protected by law, rests upon communism in 
 one sense, since what we call the protection of the law consists in the right of 
 the owner of property to call upon all citizens to protect him in its enjoyment. 
 This right to the services of his fellow men is the essence of communism. 
 Communism would use the many to benefit each. Individualism leaves each 
 to benefit, himself, believing that he thereby most benefits the many. Com- 
 munism aims at Altroism or Benevolence. Individualism culminates in Egotism. 
 Communism is mainly a creed, i. e. the assertion of a theory. Individualism 
 is the all controlling fact that governs the business of life, and sways the springs 
 and forces of human nature. Communism in government believes in numerical 
 majorities, and would ee no better mode of deciding whether God exists, than 
 by a vote of " eight to seven." Individualism may condescend to buy or use 
 majorities, but it can not believe in them. It believes in genius, destiny, rank, 
 headship, blood, property,, achievement, any machinery by which to bring the 
 many incompetent under the guidance and energy of the competent few. 
 
 Communism, in the church, subordinates pulpit to pews; inspiration to the 
 pay-roll ; elects its own preacher, tries him for his offenses on its own stand- 
 ard, and if he merely sins against. God, extends to him the forgiveness of the 
 congregation. But. if he sins against the congregation, expels him. Individu- 
 alism in religion asserts its own intuitions or inspirations, subordinates many to 
 one, and makes that one a Paul, a pope or a Luther. Business has generally 
 been left to Individualism. Worship has tended toward Communism. Both 
 have their sphere. Wisdom lies in the perpetual balance of each against the 
 ther. 
 
 A thraad of communism runs through history, from Plato and the building 
 of the Jewish temple to the Paris rebellion and the Indiana divorce law. But 
 the world has been ruled and run by its Caesars and Bonapartes its men of 
 business, and not by its St.. Simons and Fouriers. The Caesars have been coarse 
 in the gratification of their passions, but chaste in the enunciation of their 
 theories. The communistic theorist, isolated through illrepute or poverty, has 
 lived the life of an eremite while advocating license, thus sustaining the in- 
 conveniences of virtue and the odium of vice. Caesarism, when not engaged in 
 a debauch, advocates purity, at least for others. Communism dwells under a 
 cloud of suspicious repute, on an actual average of licentiousness which would 
 cut no figure were its creed sound. Perhaps this is because Caesarism has ruled the 
 world, while communism has only speculated on how it should be ruled. All 
 governments vibrate between these two forces. But the governments and 
 people of the United States of America tend more visibly than any other in 
 modern times toward communism. DeTocqueville observed this forty years ago 
 when he wrote of the despotism of public opinion, and the power which society 
 asserts in America to compel each individual to agree with the mass. 
 
 Our Declaration of Independence is a gospel of communism. Its utterance 
 " all men are created equal " is a half truth, the other half of which is " all men 
 are created unequal" and i4p endowed by their Creator with a capacity to
 
 Theories of Equality. 63 
 
 serve each other proportionate to their inequality. The Declaration does not, 
 as some suppose, assert the equality of men as to their political rights. The 
 rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, are not political, but 
 natural rights. The right to vote, hold office, enjoy a franchise, etc., would be 
 political rights. If the right to the pursuit of happiness is inalienable, then no 
 man can at any time be checked in doing that which he thinks will make him 
 happy. If liberty is inalienable, no man can be imprisoned for crime. If life 
 is inalienable, no criminal can be executed. Men derive their power of ex- 
 change and association from their inequalities. Whatever would make them 
 equal would destroy the race by stopping commerce. Capital would hire 
 nobody, wealth would cease to have value if each laborer possessed it. It is 
 because the workman wants, that capital employs, and production goes on. 
 Men that can make shoes make them for men that c^n not. . Men that can 
 make laws make them for men that can not. Differentiation of functions or 
 division of labor is as essential to the highest skill in government as in any 
 other art. If it were possible in fact, as it only is in theory, for all men to 
 make laws, then the laws which all men make would be as bungling as the 
 shoes which each man might make. 
 
 No government ever derived its power from the consent of the governed. 
 Under all, the governed have derived their power to express their consent 
 from the concessions of the governors. History opens with the governing 
 classes in the saddle, not with a compact by which they are invited to ride. 
 Governments begin, not in the desire of the great to protect the humble, but 
 in the aristocratic determination of the strong to use the massed power of the 
 muny for their own aggrandizement. 
 
 In Plato's ideal Republic, the government was to be aristocratic; only the. 
 educated \vere to make the laws, but the soil and its fruits were to be shared 
 equally by all. One year's residence in the United States would have taught 
 him that if property, which is inseparable from power, were equally shared 
 by all, the educated would have no monopoly of law-making. The people 
 desire law-makers who are more fluent than themselves, but not such as differ 
 from them in their conclusions. 
 
 The tate, says Plato, should set all men at work. The women, slaves and 
 children should be the common property of the State; forgetting that what 
 all men own, like the sea or the heavens, may have great utility or beauty, 
 but no value; it can not be prized or loved. That which can not be mine I 
 will not have. To share, to equalize property or affection is to abolish it. In 
 its very dawn the principle of communism was hostile to marriage. Generally 
 associated with some form of religious fanaticism, it has not been content with 
 making property common to all, but has either established celibacy, commu- 
 nity of wives, or polygamy. In a few instances only it has left the marital 
 relation intact. 
 
 The sect of the Essenes, according to Neander, were contemporaneous with 
 the Sadducees and Pharisees. Their doctrines were identical with those of 
 Christ, though they are'nowhere mentioned either by Jesus or by his disciples. 
 They were purists in morals, and taught non-res^tance, celibacy, prayer, fast-
 
 64 Responsible Government. 
 
 ing, humility and poverty, and were communists as respects property. Christ's 
 own teachings concerning property were more communistic than his followers 
 in later ages have been willing to admit. In the early church, all Christians 
 were communists, ate at a common board, and in joining the Christian sect 
 poured all their wealth into the common stock. The Carpocratians, an early 
 christain sect, continued from the first to the seventh century to practice com- 
 munity of goods and of wives. All monasticism has been communistic as re- 
 spects property. The clerical body, as well as the various religious orders, 
 male and female, of both the Greek and Roman Catholic churches, are com- 
 munistic bodies within themselves, each member rendering his whole sub- 
 stance to the common fund of the society, and taking upon himself the vows 
 of poverty, chastity and humility, i. e. that he will have neither property, wife 
 nor will, but will in a,ll things accept the provisions or the deprivations or- 
 dained for him by the common brotherhood. In Catholic Christianity, the high- 
 est types of religious growth are the communities, monks, nuns, and brethren 
 of various grades. The highest type of faith is that which bends the individual 
 judgment of each to the articles of faith formulated by the General-Commune 
 of all the bishops. Much of the horror felt toward the Anabaptists in an early 
 period, arose from their communistic doctrines concerning the equal right of 
 all to the land. Accompanying the reformation in Germany, there were out- 
 breaks of the Serfs against their Lords, based on the communistic doctrine, of 
 the New Testament, and aiming at a more equitable re-distribution of the lands 
 of the nobility. Simultaneously appeared a sect of Adamites, who wore no 
 clothing and pronounced in favor of community of the sexes. The phrases 
 connected with Christianity indicate a communistic husk of origin, even where 
 the kernel has fallen out. Thus its members are styled "communicants," a 
 term of analogous origin with communist. The highest act of worship is "com- 
 munion." The most thrilling pulpit appeals are those which exalt the duty 
 of benevolence over that of acquisition, in a manner that if acted upon would 
 convert the world into a Christian commune, in which he who should demand 
 one's cloak, would be kindly pressed to accept the loan of one's coat also. 
 
 There were communistic tendencies in Sir Thomas More's Utopia. Camp- 
 anelli's Civitas Soils as early as 1623 prefigured our modern eight hour laws 
 by a proposed law limiting hours of labor to four. In John Beller's college of 
 industry, (1696) the laborers were to be luxuriously provided for and taught 
 philosophy and the sciences, while the shareholders were to divide the profits. 
 All these pale before the brilliant social dreamer, whose imagination has exer- 
 cised a more potent influence than is acknowledged over modern society. 
 
 Seventy years ago Charles Fourier advanced a wild and fanciful but bril- 
 liant and seductive vision of the future condition of the world for eighty thous- 
 and years. The life of the individual, said he, must be taken as typical of the 
 life of the race; the history of other genera of animated existence, as typical 
 of the history of .man. The individual man is born, matures, declines, and dies. 
 Other races and genera appear when conditions are favorable, multiply, cul- 
 minate, and as conditions become adverse, they dwindle and disappear. The 
 human race therefore has it^infancy is in it now. Is it not like an infant,
 
 Fourier's theories of Progress. 65 
 
 wholly occupied with gratifying its senses and supplying its animal wants? 
 Only a few of any race or time have spent their lives in that which must be 
 the mature employment of the full grown mind, in high intellectual action. 
 These. Fourier thought, were the philosophers, statesmen, scientists, explorers, 
 seers, poets and prophets. The average of the race have been infants. If the 
 race after seven thousand years is still only where the individual man is at 
 seven, then a thousand years of the world's life is equivalent to one year in 
 that of the individual. The race will rise from infancy to manhood in a further 
 ten thousand years. As the unit man's advance toward maturity is indicated 
 by an increased association with his fellows, a more rapid interchange of ser- 
 vice and ideas, and a freer association in labor and production, in govern- 
 ment, in worship, and especially in the marital relation, so the human race, 
 in its advance toward maturity, will be characterized by the same increase 
 of associative power and freedom. Attractions become proportional to desti- 
 nies, i. e.. duty is largely measured by desire. The most important, factor in 
 social science, he declared to be the relation of the sexes. If that were indis- 
 criminate, freedom of selection being wholly on the side of brute power, the result 
 was savageism. If it were polygamous and enslaved, the result would be a 
 grade higher barbarism. If it were the enforced alliance of one man to one 
 woman, without divorce, it would be civilization, which he defined as the free- 
 dom of man and enslavement of woman. The emancipation of woman would 
 require from three to ten thousand years, and would introduce the Harmonial 
 Period, when the sexual attraction would be strongest in its power and most 
 chaste, and yet most free, in its expression; when Christian marriage would 
 have passed away as identical with woman's degradation, and when, in its 
 stead, .attractions would be proportional to destinies. Instead of the isolated 
 and solitary household, complex households would .arise. A more chastened 
 moral standard of taste and a greater delicacy and refinement of temperament 
 would prevent these from becoming sensual, as the European and American 
 homes admit both sexes to a larger freedom, yet with truer virtue, than those 
 of the more exclusive Turks. 
 
 Co-operation by means of corporations amd joint stock companies were also 
 important factors in Fourier's predictions. The first experiments towards the 
 Harmonial Relation would come in the form of easy divorce laws, co-operative 
 communities which would fail for lack of honesty, and premature attempts at 
 social freedom before human nature had become sufliciently refined to admit 
 of it. The Harmonial Relation would accompany the golden period of the 
 existence of the human race, until the whole, earth were filled with the glory 
 and beauty of a fully developed manhood, which would be reached in from 
 thirty to fifty thousand years, after which the race would sink slowly into 
 decay and death, the very planet becoming physically desolate. 
 
 While some of Fourier's vagaries were fantastic, few philosophers have 
 outlined more prophetically the social drift and trend of the century that 
 should follow them. Mary Wolstonecraft had previously asserted his doctrine 
 in England. John Milton and Jeremy Bentham had, so far as divorce was 
 concerned, inclined as liberally toward it as their periods would admit.
 
 66 Responsible Government. 
 
 Both in England and in Germany the Protestant 'Reformation grew largely 
 out. of a rebellion against the Roman doctrines of celibacy of the priesthood 
 and an undivorceable marriage tie. Robert Owen, Fourier's disciple, em- 
 ployed a large fortune in carrying out socialism in England. Robert Dale 
 Owen, son of the former, in Indiana, introduced and secured the passage of 
 the pioneer divorce law, which has been followed in other States, thus fulfill- 
 ing Fourier's prediction. 
 
 .Most of the leading 'ndustries of the present day, in manufactures, trans- 
 portation, insurance, banking, publishing, and the like, are conducted by joint 
 stock incorporations or financial "communes," in which the share of capital 
 is the integral unit considered in the government of the association, and their 
 owners count according to their number of shares. The theory of these asso- 
 ciations is the communistic one that there is perfect harmony of interests be- 
 tween the association as a whole and its shareholders, who, it is assumed, will 
 have no individual interests which outweigh their interests as shareholders. 
 But sometimes "rings" are formed. The ring is a clique of officers seeking 
 to make more mcMiey out of salaries or contracts, by combining against the 
 shareholders, than they can make by acting in harmony with the interests of 
 the whole. It is individualism fraudulently using the cloak of communism 
 to compass its eads. 
 
 Trade requires too much shrewdness, and agriculture too much toil, to be 
 carried on by the trustees of corporations. These, therefore, and the mechanic 
 arts and professions, are left to individuals. The individual teaches, but the 
 commune, called a college, gives permanency to his classes. The individual 
 preaches, but the ecclesiastical commune, called a congregation, or conference, 
 or synod, or council, or its representative, a bishop, controls his appointment. 
 In art, invention, authorship, oratory, and all things requiring genius, the 
 individual still reigns. In organization, and all things requiring co-operation 
 and numerical influence, the commune is powerful. 
 
 Mormonism is an oligarchic or monarchic commune, based on polygamic 
 fanaticism and co-operation in industry. The Shaker communities are com- 
 munes, not unlike the Essenes, bused on a stoical system of abstinence, self- 
 denial, celibacy, and co-operation in industry. Russia is full of communistic 
 villages. The free-love communities at Oneida and elsewhere are avowedly 
 intended to realize the dream of Fourier, as respects property, labor, and the 
 complex household. Democracy itself is a political commune as to all who 
 participate in the right of suffrage, and there is a communistic flavor to the 
 name adopted by many of our States, viz: "commonwealth." 
 
 At least a half century of democratic government was required to develop its 
 proper fruits. We began our national existence under the influence of English 
 and aristocratic manners, habits and traditions. We announced democratic 
 theories in 1776, but continued aristocratic practices, which in some degree pre- 
 served us from their immediate effect. We continued to require property quali- 
 fications for voters, jurors and officeholders, for half a century. We continued 
 the tradition that only men able to live without office should be elected to office; 
 that men should not seek office, for its emoluments, but should wait for the office
 
 National Drift toward a Consolidated Commune. 67 
 
 to seek them; that judges should be* appointed by the Governor and Senate; 
 tlinr power should not be wielded by the people directly, but through their rep- 
 resentative?, and that statesmanship, diplomacy and government were profes- 
 sions requiring skill. These aristocratic traditions received their first severe 
 blow under Andrew Jackson, and have been steadily waning since. We have 
 become enamored of the supposed principle that all men know more^han one 
 man. We have crushed the individualism and aristocratic tendencies whvch 
 gave dignity to the early administrations. In the formation of our govern- 
 ment even the three little counties on the Delaware would not be ruled by 
 their parent commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but must, set up as a State by 
 themselves. First, the thirteen colonies formed a league of friendship; then 
 a confederation, having a central agency for suggestion and debate, but with- 
 out either executive, legislative or judicial powers; then a union of States, in 
 which the central government debated for eighty years with State's rights 
 whether it were a union of States or a state of union or as the Germans say, 
 Staaffn-bund or a bundestaat; then, by the war of the rebellion, we merged the 
 Federal Union into a consolidated nation, which is now the sole and supreme 
 judge, in fact, of the .extent of the rights it will leave to the several States. 
 The motto of the Republic now is, "No State shall," etc. Constitutional forms 
 are entirely competent to say that no State shall prevent, a woman from voting, 
 or shall maintain an indissoluble marriage or the collection of debt. 
 
 Mr. John Stuart Mill, in England, so justly noted for his contempt for all 
 the conservative forces of society, like Fourier, combined the theory that land 
 should be the common property of all, with the theory that whenever a woman 
 wearied of her former husband she should be allowed a change of venue to 
 another. He, therefore, consented to attract to himself the wife of a relatively 
 insipid Christian gentleman of good character, and thus to prove that attrac- 
 tion* are proportional to destinies. In America, five years ago, there were 
 three national associations for the emancipation of woman. Their three pre- 
 sidents, respectively, were Henry Ward Beecher. Theodore Tiltpn, and Victoria 
 C. Woodhull. The coincidence is its own comment. 
 
 We have erideavored to grasp the genius of communism, and to state its 
 spirit and aims in the language of its more intelligent advocates, and hence 
 in their most favorable aspect. For we regard it as a necessary and salutary 
 force in society, when kept within proper limits by antagonistic forces. Let 
 ns now speak of its methods. 
 
 The effort to establish a perfect social commune, or association founded on 
 the idea of the free participation of all in-the fruits of its common labors, has 
 seldom or never succeeded, except where its members have been held in union 
 by a powerful religious enthusiasm. But large associations have been formed 
 whose aims were partially communistic, upon less effective bases. Among 
 these are free-masonry, and kindred orders, trades unions, guild-;. Free- 
 masonry is the guild or trades union sublimated and idealized. It began as a 
 guild of architects and builders, in the feudal epoch, say from the ninth to 
 the fourteenth centuries, and when the attractions of its principles caused 
 nobles and gentlemen to seek admission to its order, it retained the- symbols
 
 68 Responsible Government. 
 
 without the substance of its early functions. Doubtless, wherever large masses 
 of workingnren have been on hire together for wages, they have combined for 
 the common struggle against, the demands of employers, and for common aid 
 if employment failed. Our modern trades unions now number on million 
 persons, supporting probably six millions of people in Great Britain, have 
 upward* of half a million in France, and proportional strength throughout 
 Europe. In Italy they were an important revolutionary factor in aiding Gari- 
 baldi to overthrow the temporal power of the Pope and establish the kingdom 
 of Italy. Everywhere they are anti-papal, and very largely secularist. In 
 America are at least 250,000 members of trades unions. In Chicago, at the 
 last city election, the Socialists cast 11.000 votes; as if a city government in 
 which but one in six of the voters are tax-payers were not sufficiently social- 
 istic! 
 
 Most of the unionists throughout the world are affiliated with the two 
 international associations, one aiming to control their political action, and the 
 other to render material aid. All of them are Fourierites in their doctrines as 
 to capital, as the following statement from their declaration at Nuremburg, in 
 1868, will show: 
 
 All new inventions and discoveries, instead of redounding, as now, to the benefit 
 of the few and to the -enslaving of the, many, must be converted into means of re- 
 ducing the toils of all, of beautifying life, and ennobling humanity. All the great, 
 indispensable means of existence, as lands, mines, machines, and means of communi- 
 cation, must be the common property of all, and mtist be made so gradually. Nothing 
 can reasonably be private property, but the product of labor one's own labor. 
 
 The unions have disciplined, educated and protected the workingmen, and 
 are of great service to them in their conflicts with capital. Unquestionably 
 the wages classes have received far more pay in the aggregate, and maintained 
 a condition of greater freedom by means of them. Yet, as their sole bond of 
 union is the lack of capital in their members, they are founded on incapacity 
 to save money, as their corner stone. Their financial theories are vagaries of 
 the vote-yourself-a-farm-and-a-mule order, and will be until men who can save 
 money are admitted to their councils. 
 
 Among these proletarian or wages-working classes in England, no form of 
 communism is more significant than the creed of the Land Tenure Reform 
 Association, which was given a prominence greater than its limited following 
 deserves, by the fact that the late John Stuart Mill was its president and 
 champion. This association holds that land derives its value, not in any con- 
 siderable degree from the labor or capital expended on it by its possessor, but 
 from the aggregate movements of society. The selling value of land is simply 
 the principal on which the rent it will bring would pay the interest, i. e., the 
 Value of land is arrived at by capitalizing its rental. Its rent is such deduc- 
 tion from the gi-oss returns received for the products of the labor of its tenant, 
 as the tenant is willing to make for its use. Hence all values of land are 
 deductions from the earnings of labor. The sum which he Is thus willing to 
 deduct depends on the number of uses that compete for its possession. This, 
 in turn, depends upon the nearness of the consumer, if it is used for produc- 
 tion, or upon the nearness of materials, if it is used for manufacture, or upon
 
 Communistic TJieory applied to Railways. 69 
 
 the nearness of customers, if it is used for purposes of exchange. All these, 
 in turn, depend upon the aggregate societary movement, including, often, not 
 only the commerce, manufactures, agriculture, and means of transportation of 
 the country in which the land is situated, but also those in other countries 
 interchanging products with that of the land^in question. This societary 
 movement makes the whole difference between the value of a vacant lot on 
 Broadway and of one in the Sahara desert. Perhaps society ought to have 
 some interest in the values which it thus creates, but it is difficult to conceive 
 how such values can be distributed among their involuntary authors, who may 
 be residents of foreign and even antipodal lands, without bringing to a sudden 
 collapse that very societary movement through whieh these values arise. 
 
 In America, where we have perfect free trade in land, and only the means 
 of transportation over it are the subjects of monopoly, the same communistic 
 tendencies exist to regard railways, canals and grain marts as nie common 
 property of the people, as are manifested in England to "dis-establish" the 
 private title of the nobility and gentry to land. Our railway reformers de- 
 clare the railways to be public highways, and the Supreme Court of the United 
 States sanctions the power of State Legislatures to prescribe schedule rates of 
 freight and fare, and the rates at which grain warehouses, built by private 
 capital, without, any exercise of eminent domain or of any legislative fran- 
 chise, shall store grain. Of course, American railway properties, like English 
 lands, derive their value largely from the aggregate movements of society. 
 But what kind of property does not? Even personal property derives its value 
 from its vicinity to a customer who desires to use it. Of course, one portion 
 of the public have an interest, in having grain stored at reasonable rates, an- 
 other portion has an interest in its storage at high rates; but no other or 
 greater than they have in the cases of all other commodities. Thus, wherever 
 monopoly is oppressive, human nature takes refuge in socialism. The few 
 successful experiments in co-operative stores at Rochd.-ile and other points in 
 England, and the co-operative banks in Germany, and building, and loan, and 
 insurance associations everywhere, are varied but familiar illustrations of the 
 increasing tendency toward purely financial and industrial communism. 
 
 The theory of the expanding availability and power that co-operation may 
 develop, is that the sole function which capital performs in business is to feed, 
 clothe and supply the destitute laborer until returns can be received for the 
 sale of the product of his labor that the sole function of ca'pital, therefore, is 
 to cause laborers to co-operate; that this capital is ordinarily only credit ob- 
 tained at the bank or elsewhere, either through the known solvency of the 
 employer or by the deposit of the promises of purchasers to pay at some future 
 time for the product of the employee's labor; that if the co-operation of the 
 laborers could be maintained without capital, it would itself command the 
 credit, which would be a sufficient substitute for the capital. All this, how- 
 ever, involves a greater average trustworthiness than wages workers have 
 hitherto usually possessed. Indeed, the chief source of calamity connected 
 with all communistic associations is, that the amount of trust required by their
 
 70 Responsible Government. 
 
 inherent principle of organization renders them vicious means of imposing on 
 the unwary and impoverishing the confiding. 
 
 The secluded and private home is more expensive and less socially attract- 
 ive than something like the complex household suggested by Fourier would be, 
 if the latter were not, at war with the fidelities and convictions which preserve 
 the purity of the family. .Yet, the drift of mankind, during the past century, 
 has been towards the partial realization of the complex household, as for in- 
 stance in hotel life and at the watering places. Perhaps this progress is 
 making quite as rapidly as the best interests of society admit. 
 
 Is human progress from henceforth to consist in an increase in this power 
 of association, until it shall work a general relaxation in the degree of individ- 
 ualism and exclusiveness, which have heretofore seemed inseparable adjuncts 
 of progress, property and affection ? Is the tendency to use in common large 
 masses of property, to increase until associated masses, and finally the associated 
 mass shall own the railroads, the mines, the manufactories and the land; until 
 private individuals shall own, and shall desire to own, only the passing pro- 
 duct of their labor? Is this an absolute tendency toward socialism, or is it 
 only one of two antagonistic tendencies, and is the drift toward individualism 
 as marked in other directions as that toward socialism is in those we have 
 named? 
 
 If the latter be true in this country, then simultaneously wfth this increase 
 of socialism there would be growing up, extending and consolidating in per- 
 manence and power, a visible American aristocracy, for only an aristocracy 
 of some kind can make head against the inherent tendencies of a government 
 by the non-capitalist class toward communism. 
 
 Would such a consummation be one to be dreaded or desired? On this 
 point there is -a vast amount of misconception and of communistic opinion 
 throughout the great masses of the American people, owing to the fact, that 
 while all classes of society are pretty well grounded in the communistic theo- 
 ries of Jesus concerning the effect of wealth, comparatively very few look upon 
 the subject of (he accumulation of large fortunes in single hands from a purely 
 economical aspect. No mistake in political economy can be more wretchedly 
 stupid than to suppo-e that the welfare of society would be promoted by the 
 dividing up of large fortunes or even by the diminution of the largest fortunes; 
 and yet so commonly is this tenet held that not only those who have never 
 amassed any large fortunes, or any fortunes whatever, but nearly every per- 
 son we have met among those who have, hold almost without exception that it 
 would undoubtedly be better for mankind, and the most benevolent, act the 
 owner of a fortune could perform would be to divide it up among the poor. 
 This is because few persons trace out the large fortune even into its invest- 
 ments, still less in its economical effects. But if there were an atom of truth 
 in this monstrous error, the robbery of the rich would be the sacred duty of the 
 poor. But the fact is that no matter what the religion of which such a theory 
 of property may form an integral part, it is so false that only its contemptible- 
 ness can rescue it from being criminal.
 
 The Economy of Large Fortunes. 71 
 
 If the owner of a cart and yoke of oxen, with which he is engaged in earn- 
 ing his living, were approached with the argument that he ought to cut up his 
 cart for firewood and kilf and divide up his yoke of oxen for the food of the 
 poor families of his neighborhood, he would roar with laughter at the absurdity 
 of the proposition and would instantly point out how such a use of his wealth 
 would create more want than it would relieve; by stopping the productive labor 
 in which he was engaged to enable idlers to consume the capital with which it 
 was being conducted. But the folly of the destruction or dividing up and con- 
 sumption of capital so small as this, is only a little more evident, and not in any 
 degree more demonstrable to the man who gives the subject the least thought, 
 than would be the like sub-division and distribution of large capitals. Take 
 for instance the $150,000,000 and upwards of capital owned by William B. 
 r. Mr. Astor's ambition as a capitalist naturally is, so to manage this 
 capital as to combine the greatest security in its investment wifti the largest 
 permanent income, therefore the first requisite to this end is to keep it always 
 in use and productive. But every productive use he can make of it is a loan 
 in sume form, of its use, to some class of persons who lack capital. So far as 
 it c insists of real estate, buildings adapted to the wants of society must be 
 erected and maintained thereon and kept rented, and this is a loan of shelter 
 to the homeless. The larger the fortune the Ipss will be the time its possessor 
 will have to find tenants, and while an owner of but few houses might, by in- 
 vestiiiir his own time, rent them at high prices and on terms disadvantageous 
 to the tenant, the owner of a large estate can only keep his buildings tenanted 
 by keeping them more desirable than any others to be had for the same rent, 
 and by renting them at lower rates than equally desirable premises can else- 
 where be had. We find this to be the universal reputation borne by the Astor 
 investments in New York city ; all tenants preferring to hire of Astor and 
 other similar proprietors of vast estates, and carefully avoiding the hiring of 
 a landlord who owns but one house, provided a choice between the two is open 
 bo the tenant. Every such tenant informs you exactly what you'would infer 
 from a slight reflection, especially if your judgment was guided to its conclu- 
 sion by the very simple principle in political economy, viz., that the smaller 
 the quantity of time which a landlord can give to his investment, the lower 
 the raie at which he will be compelled to make it, and that the capital of a large 
 capitalist never averages but a small fraction of the ratio of interest per cent. 
 that is expected by a small capitalist. Of course if the Astor estate were dis- 
 tributed iimong as many owners as there are tenants, there would be a general 
 advance of rents among all the tenants, and the charity would thus result in 
 an immediate tax upon industry to sustain idleness. 
 
 A. T. Stcwari. by selling ten times the quantity of goods that had previously 
 been so d by one merchant, was enabled to reduce by nearly nine-tenths the 
 fractions of cost which had previously entered into the selling price of goods to 
 pay for store rent, service of salesmen and the like. He might therefore take 
 off four-tenths of the difference between the buying and selling price, and still 
 make a profit five times greater, on his own time, than his brother merchants. 
 Thus in no mode would his capital so speedily, evenly and judiciously divide
 
 72 Responsible Government. 
 
 itself up among the poor, in the form of reduced prices on goods, as by leaving 
 him to manage it in the manner which would most promote his own wealth. 
 The massive stores, shops, factories and other appliances which he erected are 
 virtually the property of mankind in their essential utilities. That which Mr. 
 Stewart substracted from all his wealth as the net compensation for superin- 
 tending its amassments, consisted of the food he ate and the clothes he wore; 
 probably not exceeding $1000 a year. Even his marble palace and paintings 
 are the property of the world as truly as is the shell that encases the coral 
 insect after the worker has shrivelled in death. When Commodore Vanderbilt 
 determined, for the better preservation of the estate he had amassed, to practice 
 the English system of primogeniture by leaving nearly his entire wealth to 
 his eldest son, he taxed the world with the expenses of one system of manage- 
 ment only in preference to five or six. If subjected to competition, the cost 
 to which William H. Vanderbilt can, if necessary, reduce the expense of man- 
 agement of $200,000,000 of capital invested in railways will be the sum re- 
 quired for the support of his one family. If not subjected to competition, it 
 must be because no other capitalists believe they could loan to the public an 
 equal amount of capital, or the capital necessary to compete with him, at so 
 low a rate of profit as he is doing. In either case the public are being served 
 at the lowest possible rates. 
 
 The secondary economies growing out of the "luxurious living" which is 
 attributed to the possessors of large wealth is generally very little investi- 
 gated or understood by the "sell all thou hast and give to the poor" school of 
 economists. All luxury is involuntary but highly economical charity, simply 
 because all the articles of luxury, not being articles of necessity or indispensa- 
 ble, are not produced by the competent or well conditioned class any where, 
 but by the extremely and precariously poor, who, but for luxurious living, would 
 be crowded out of existence. Food, shelter, clothing and hardware being 
 necessities of life, are in such ready demand at remunerative returns, that the 
 well to do business classes in all parts of the world who can select the more 
 profitable occupations, everywhere are engaged in furnishing them. But laces 
 are knit, and diamonds are cut by the poorest classes of artizans in Paris. 
 Pearls are hunted by the humblest fishermen of Ceylon. Furs are gathei-ed by 
 Kamtschatkans and Esquimaux on the frontiers of polar cold, where humble 
 life struggles feebly against the eternal chill. Diamonds are sought for by the 
 hungry beggars in the mountains of Peru and Hindoostan. Even gold and sil- 
 ver hunting are the resourse of the shiftless and adventurous class, while coal 
 and iron are mined by wealthy corporations that, endure for scores of years 
 and even centuries. Raw silks are the products of the labors of the almond 
 eyed Mongols, who work at a penny a day, and the Hindoos, whom the most un- 
 tiring industry fails to rescue from famine. The weavers of silk are nearly 
 their counterparts in France. The gra.pes for the finest wines are cultivated 
 by the peasantry skirting the bases of the Alps and Appenines, and the 
 roses from which the finest genuine perfumes are extracted Hoom on the 
 blood-stained and tax-drained fields of Albania and Bulgaria, where for cen- 
 turies the cross has maintained its unequal contest with the crescent. So, trav-
 
 TJie Economy of Rank and Honor. 73 
 
 ersing the entire range of luxuries indulged in by the very rich, we find they 
 have sent relief in some degree and at some distant point to the exceptionally 
 poor. The real waste and "loss to society diminishes as we ascend, and dwell- 
 ings, furniture, clothing, all the incidents of life, become more durable in pro- 
 portion to the substantialness and elegance with which they are constructed. 
 The least costly element present at a royal wedding are the Queen's dia- 
 monds, for the wear of them for a thousand years would detract nothing from 
 their weight, brilliancy or value. The expenditure incurred for them was 
 not a consumption or loss of wealth, but a mere investment, which the nearest 
 jeweller will cash on demand as a banker would a note. They are not the 
 subject of waste. But the boots and hat of the outriders in livery, that ac- 
 company her carriage, will wear out in a few months. In like manner the 
 least costly thing connected with society is its aristocracy, for nearly every 
 expenditure made by a capitalist is a permanent investment, while most of 
 the expenditures of the peasantry are for objects which disappear in a few 
 months, or at most years. And of all the elements of an aristocracy, the most 
 economical are ranks and honors : for they are a species of payment for public 
 service, which secures more consideration and respect from the masses than 
 can be purchased with money; are, therefore, of more value to the possessor 
 than wealth, and yet cost the public treasury and the tax-payers absolutely 
 nothing. In our universities and armies we retain and dispense ranks, titles 
 and honors as the reward of merit, and no people are more proud of them. It 
 would be safe to say that including political, scholastic, military, legal, medi- 
 cal and clerical titles, we have at least one million of titled persons in America. 
 To each of them his title, whether it be Col., Rev., Dr., A. B. or Hon., is as 
 dear to him as a very considerable share of his fortune. The differentiation 
 of society into many grades and ranks is as inseparable to the highest efficiency 
 of the societary movement, as its differentiation into occupations, sexes, sects, 
 and schools of opinion. 
 
 The necessity of recognizing aristocracy in all societies increases in pro- 
 portion to the inequalities of condition and development which mark the social 
 life. It is far greater in American society to-day than it was a century ago, 
 greater in the cities and towns than in the rural populations, and has always 
 been greater at the south than at the north because the south brings side by 
 side an inferior race upon whose minds the rudiments of industrial civilization 
 are barely dawning, a class of degenerated whites who know little of politics 
 in the higher sense of the term, and an educated landowning class who have 
 been accustomed to look upon the two former classes very much as the Roman 
 patricians looked upon the plebian dependents of his gens, or as the feudal 
 baron protected, patronized or plundered the serfs of his clientage accordingly 
 as they were loyal and deserving or rebellious and treacherous. The Southern 
 States, from the beginning, developed their gentry and their peasantry. Probably 
 either the colored race must be eliminated, or the white race must cease to 
 contain any representatives of the ancient noblesse, which, during the first fifty 
 years of the republic, rendered that section the ruling one, before Southern 
 society can cease to be aristocratic in a sense much more fundamental and de-
 
 74 Responsible Government. 
 
 termined than most of the people of the North can conceive. The great reason 
 why the weight of Federal despotism vests oppressively on the South is because 
 it is the despotism of the principle of democracy which, in the true sense 
 of that word, the South despises, over that of aristocracy which the South loves.. 
 There will never come a ti.ne, during the next two hundred years, when it will 
 not conduce to the best interests of the South to be governed by her aristocracy 
 of educated landholders, rather than by her democratic rabble of negroes and 
 poor whites. The political alliance, therefore, which the Republican party of 
 the North undertook to form with the negroes of the South, who being the 
 illiterate mob, are, in the sense we use the terms, the democratic party of the 
 South, i. e. the party of non-taxpayers, was illogical and could end only in 
 misfortune and failure. It was as ill advised as the alliance existing before 
 the war between the Democratic (Irish) vote of the North which was largely 
 non-taxpaying, and the aristocratic slaveholding party of the South. 
 
 The true interests of both sections require such a re-adjustment of parties 
 as will cause each State, county, town and hamlet to contain its balancing ele- 
 ments, its two parties; instead of allowing whole towns and States in one sec- 
 tion of the Union to swing into one party, to be only off-set by towns and States 
 voting solidly against them, a thousand miles away. The latter condition 
 tends as irresistibly toward civil war, as it did before slavery was nominally 
 abolished. 
 
 No fear need ever arise of any dangerous consequence to result from con- 
 flicts between the tax-payers and non-tax-payers of the same town, county or 
 State. Being face to face with each other they will be compelled to talk the 
 matter out and come to an understanding, Each has certain rights in govern- 
 ment, and in the true analysis the interests of capital and labor are harmonious. 
 But that this harmony of interest may appear, it is essential that both be 
 heard through their authorized representatives. 
 
 The representation of capital in both the Northern" and Southern State 
 legislatures would supply a balance wheel in our constitution, which would 
 lessen the hatefulness of the Union to the people of the South, because the 
 Union would then come to recognize those aspects in which men are unequal, 
 instead of onesidedly recognizing only those aspects in which they are equal. 
 So long as capital punishment is practiced it is the sheerest folly to maintain 
 that all men have an equal and inalisnable right to life. So long as imprison- 
 ment for crime prevails it is equally silly to assert that the right to liberty or 
 the pursuit of happiness is either equal or inalienable. Human rights are 
 graded in every State according to the aggregate judgment of that State. 
 Local self-government consists in permitting this difference of judgment to 
 prevail. They will differ most widely where the capacity for their right exer- 
 cise is most unequally diffused. So far as any system of Federal law may 
 seek to break down the aristocratic distinction between the white race and the 
 black at the South,' it will come into conflict with a law as much more irresist- 
 ible than Federal law, as the law which controls the circulation of the blood 
 is more irresistible than the law which controls the impounding of stray cat- 
 tle or the sale of meats. Republics have the same right, under the constitution
 
 Reconstruction needed North as well as South. 75 
 
 of the Unite'l States, to be aristocratic that they have to be democratic, to main- 
 tain inequality in the rights of citizens as to maintain equality. The consti- 
 tion requires every State to have a republican form of government, but does 
 not require any State to have a democratic form of government, nor that its 
 social customs shall recognize social equality. In so far as the power of the 
 Federal Arms has been brought to bear to convert the aristocratic republics 
 of the South into democratic republics, it has not succeeded, and never deserved 
 to succeed. This fact will continue to make itself manifest in the social life 
 of the Southern States, and it. is the part of Northern statesmen to recognize 
 the legitimacy of the aristocratic principle in republics, i. e. of the rights of 
 capital as against mere numbers. 
 
 By giving representation to capital, they can at least erect a bulwark 
 against its further abolition, for the same force of numbers that could abolish 
 slavery could abolish banks, corporations, credit, and even distribute the 
 lands by a majority vote. The capital of the North, which was so freely 
 poured out to abolish slavery, may find that its sorcery hath raised a spirit 
 which will not down at its bidding. 
 
 What South and North both especially need, and without which they can 
 not long be held back from another civil war. is, that such questions and poli- 
 cies shall be brought before the country as will break up the two sectional and 
 passionate mobs called "parties," which are now drifting us all hopelessly 
 toward another war. and shall compel a conflict in which large masses of in- 
 fluential men in each section shall unite politically with equally large masses 
 of influential men in tfee other. 
 
 Such a question would be the re-organization of our State governments, in 
 such manner as to give capital or the tax-payers a distinct veto on the action 
 of the non-capitalists, and the re-organization of the National government, so 
 as to render the Executive and Cabinet responsible to Congress, and Congress 
 responsible directly to the people, which can only be effected by the system 
 of resignaKle ministries and dissoluble legislatures set forth in chapters I and 
 II of this pamphlet. 
 
 If it be said that the agitation of two such questions, and at once, would 
 rock the fabric of our political society to its very centre, would divide the 
 upper classes of society against the lower, the poor against the rich, and the 
 property-holding against the non-property-holding, then my answer will be, 
 BO much the better, for only in this way c.-in past issues be sealed up in obli- 
 vion, the union of the States preserved without war, the Csesaric despotism of 
 section over section be ended, a new holocaust of a million lives and a thousand 
 millions of treasure be averted, and the Republic lifted into a dignity, as to 
 its constitution and destiny, worthy of its dignity in point of numbers and 
 wealth. 
 
 These being the premises upon which I venture to believe that an appeal 
 to the American people in behalf of the re-organization of our constitutions, 
 both State and National, should be entertained, it will be perceived that I am 
 not searching after Utopian excellences merely to satisfy the cravings of an 
 aesthetic imagination. I am not seeking to gild the refined gold, nor to paint
 
 76 Responsible Government. 
 
 the lily, but to avert an impending appeal to arms, which, without constitu- 
 tional reconstruction at the North as well as at the South, is inevitable, and 
 which, if it comes, while it can not be more unnecessary or perhaps more 
 bloody than that through which the country has but recently passed, will 
 prove even more unfruitful of results that are consistent with true republic- 
 anism or with human welfare. 
 
 Shall we be told that the war, by abolishing slavery, has removed the 
 cause of war, and, therefore, that'we are secure against its revival? Thi$ 
 argument has three fatal defects: First, that slavery is not, save by the con- 
 tinued maintenance of a degree of Federal intimidation, which is inconsistent 
 with State freedom, abolished. Second, that the class of prophets who now 
 predict that there will be no war because slavery is abolished, is the same 
 which, prior to the previous war, predicted that war could not result from the 
 passionate treatment of the slavery question, because the South would foresee 
 its abolition as the necessary consequence of war. As prophets they stand 
 impeached, from lack of familiarity with the Southern mind. And, thirdly, 
 the prophecy assumes that people never go to war without a good cause, 
 whereas the converse is true, that people seldom go to war with a good cause. 
 
 As regards the abolition of slavery, we have, it is true, a constitutional 
 amendment, providing that slavery and involuntary servitude, " except in 
 punishment of crime," is abolished. But what a Trojan horse is the exception. 
 Each State can define crime, and slavery in punishment of crime is as lawful 
 as slavery as the consequence of race ever was. Moreover, there is no law pre- 
 venting the Southern States from excluding the blacks from holding office, for 
 although the XlVth amendment provides that no State shall make any law 
 which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United 
 States, yet the courts, Federal and State, have, in an uninterrupted score of 
 decisions, held that this language, which occurs in a previous clause of the 
 constitution and in the ordinance of 1787, does not include the "privilege" of 
 holding office. It is easy to sfie that, on the withdrawal of Federal authority 
 from the Southern States, the control of the matter of slavery in them is rele- 
 gated to State control, and that the Federal government is in control of no 
 machinery for reversing the action of the State, except war. 
 
 Under these circumstances, it was earnestly to be desired that as soon as 
 possible after the physical rebellion was crushed, the intellectual and moral 
 rebellion of the southern people should also end. The more sagacious leaders 
 of the Republican party of the North, viz: Lincoln, Seward, Chase, the Blairs, 
 Sumner, Trurubull, Julian and Greeley, labored to this end, and were, one by 
 one, crucified by the relentless bigotry and stupidity of the rank and file of 
 their party, who looked upon every attempt to heal the breach occasioned by 
 the war, as treason to the Republican party, and every recognition of the right 
 of the Southern States to that equality of rights which the North had fought 
 to maintain them in, as being a defeat of the northern arms. The attitude of 
 the North and South, which might, by the prevalence of wiser counsels, and 
 by passing on to new issues, have been converted into one of fraternity, has 
 been, instead, congealed into one of disarmed neutrality and sullen dislike.
 
 The Perils head. 77 
 
 The peculiar manipulation by which a probable popular verdict in favor of 
 Tilden was transformed into an electoral verdict in favor of Hayes, was not 
 cured by the surrender by Hayes of the " Republican " cause in two of the 
 States whose electoral votes were counted in his favor. -It was looked upon 
 rather as the act of the thief caught "with the manour" upon him, throwing 
 away that portion of the plunder which was to form the share of his confeder- 
 ates, only to facilitate his escape with the share which he himself* would enjoy. 
 The effect of this peculiar course of politics is, that the issues which the war 
 should have settled are not settled. The success of the Republican party, and the 
 revival of the Democratic, at each ensuing election, has rendered it necessary 
 to re-open them, according to that peculiar crab-like genius, which pertains 
 to our system of voting, as explained in chapters I and II, whereby we must, 
 of necessity, vote on past issues. 
 
 It is totally immaterial in which section, or from what causes, or by whose 
 fault, or in which political party, the elements of thija' incapacity for self- 
 government originate, so far as its effect to precipitate th'e republic into disas- 
 ter, and prove the incompetency of the aggregated whole' for self-government, 
 is concerned. The experiment, of a republic in America assumes that the 
 people, as a whole, of both sections and of both parties, are fit for self-govern- 
 ment. If this assumption is false as to half, it is false in all. If the North 
 could prove that the South is unfit for self-government, the same proof would 
 convict the North of the same incapacity; for, if the South were unfit to be a 
 partner in the firm, why did the North compel the continuance of the partner- 
 ship? "Mutual recrimination, therefore, like reciprocal vilification, only 
 establishes the incapacity of both parties. 
 
 The prospect before us is far from satisfactory. Great as have been the 
 sacrifices which the people of either section have made in the interest of what 
 they supposed would promote their future welfare, the country now presents 
 every indication to the calm and thoughtful mind of being once more adrift 
 
 in the rapids, tending downward toward another civil war. One thing Amer- 
 
 ^ 
 icans may as well understand, bluntly and at the start. If the American 
 
 people, as a whole, of the North as well as of the South, have not, for any rea- 
 son whatever, the capacity to organize politics so as to avoid the formation 
 of two sectional political parties, one of which shall represent the " solid 
 South," and the other the "solid North," then the American people have not 
 the capacity for self-government, but out of sheer- passion and stolidity are 
 doomed to drift out of one civil war into another, until the very heart and life 
 of republicanism are extinguished in military despotism. The politics of the 
 country can not be run by the solid Nortli against a solid South, from decade 
 to decade, without the recurrence of periodical civil wars, resulting either in 
 the establishment of permanent Caesarism of one section over the other, which 
 would be an abolition of republican liberty, or in separation. 
 
 Possibly we have not the materials for creating an aristocracy after the 
 European pattern, in which pride of inherited fortune, honor and reputation 
 often outweigh the pride of personal character, achievement and ability. It 
 may be reserved for us to demonstrate that European aristocracies have very
 
 78 Responsible Government. 
 
 crudely and imperfectly represented the influence which capital and culture 
 should have over government. Possibly, however, we are to be always con- 
 fined to the weakness of a government by the unskilled. It would be to us a 
 new and high ambition to seek to illustrate the machinery by which capital, 
 experience and culture may be given their due share in the control of a gov- 
 ernment, without recalling the ballot from any to whom it has been given. 
 
 We will n"ot say that ranks and titles are to be created. Even in monarchies 
 many men of the highest, rank regard these as baubles which could not add to 
 their dignity or estimation. But it may Avell be doubted whether ranks, honors 
 and titles are not at once the most economical, satisfactory and useful modes 
 of rewarding public service and giving distinguished recognition to merit. 
 However this may be, we do need the habit of dignity which ranks and 
 titles have promoted, or our civilization itself will be overslaughed in vulgarity 
 and smut. 
 
 There are essentially but two forms of government in the world, viz: a 
 government by the better classes, and a government by the worse classes. 
 All appearances or pretenses either of a government by one man or of a gov- 
 ernment by all men, are equally delusive and false. As lai'ge a ratio of the 
 people are employed in the work of governing in Russia, which purports to 
 be government by one, as in the United States of America, which purports to 
 be a government by all. True, in America the people may change their gov- 
 ernors at stated intervals, and in Russia they can not. But to change one's 
 governors -is not to govern. The ruler, whether he be a monarch or a majority, 
 must represent either the aristocratic or the democratic class. The best gov- 
 ernment will balance delicately between the two antagonistic influences, 
 swinging wholly into the control of neither. The aristocratic class will bring 
 to it wisdom, integrity, pride of birth, character and fortune, experience, con- 
 servatism and the influences of culture, art, veneration for all that is worth 
 preserving in the past, and personal and official dignity. . 
 
 The democi'atic classes will bring physical vigor, readiness to change, hard- 
 ihood, inconstancy, turbulence and revolution. Athens, Rome, Venice, Ger- 
 many, France and England all laid the foundations of their greatness during 
 the ascendency of their aristocratic clnss. Assuming that the experience of 
 nations justifies the doctrine, that in every government capital as well as labor, 
 experience as well as ignorance, and the honorable as well as the lower clasps 
 should be represented, it remains to consider how this should be done. In 
 England and throughout Europe a peer casts one vote in the House of Peers, 
 whether his possessions are great or small, and in some cases even though 
 they may have been dissipated or squandered by his fault. This, after all, is 
 a class representation and not a representation of capital. In the recently 
 proposed charter for the city of New York it was provided, that the Board 
 of Finance, or upper branch of the city legislature, should be voted for by tax- 
 payers only, but there was no provision whereby the power of the tax-payer's 
 vote should be proportionate to the amount of taxes he pays. This also is a 
 representation of tax-payers as a class, but not of capital as a force or power.
 
 Culture and Experience should be Represented. 79 
 
 * If capital is to be represented with any accuracy in government it must be 
 by providing, not only that the upper branch of the state or city legislature 
 shall be voted for by tax-payers only, but that such elections shall be held at 
 a different time, upon a different registration, and by the use of totally differ- 
 ent machinery from those at and by which the popular branch of the legisla- 
 ture is chosen. Each voter must be registered as entitled to cast a number of 
 votes proportionate to the capital he owns or the taxes he pays Jay one vote 
 for every ten or fifty dollars of taxes he pays, or to be more accurate, for 
 every dollar of tax so paid. Every legislative district, being first alloted its 
 quota of members of the upper house proportionate to its assessed property, 
 will choose its number of members on the same principle as directors are 
 chosen by the .shareholders in a corpoi-ation, i. e. if the district is entitled to 
 three members, then the three candidates receiving the votes representing the 
 largest value of assessed property will be elected, and the persons voting for 
 either of the defeated candidates will have the power within a limited period 
 to transfer their votes to either of the elected candidates, so that their voting 
 power shall not be lost. Presumptively, therefore, the three members elected 
 will hold the proxies of all the tax-payers in their county. However that may 
 be. each member will cast in the legislature the aggregate vote of the_tax- 
 payers whom he represents. Some slight actuarial labor will be rendered 
 necessary to count the vote rendered in this manner, but the result arrived at 
 will be. what no government has ever yet so perfectly obtained, viz: a repre- 
 sentation of capital. Under such a system, corporations should vote through 
 their officers as if they were individuals, and women as freely as men, in the 
 election of the capital branch of the legislature in question. 
 
 It might also be provided that well certified intelligence, especially on 
 political topics, should increase the voting power of the citizen, in the upper 
 branch of the State legislature, though its possessor were not a tax-payer. If one 
 extra vote be given for every fifty dollars of taxes paid, then let one who has 
 been three times re-elected to any town office have one or two extra votes, as 
 may Vie adjusted, since this continued approval furnishes as sound an evidence 
 of his superior experience and intelligence as would be furnished by his accu- 
 mulation by his own industry of property paying fifty dollars a year of taxes, 
 or thereabouts. Let a third re-election by the people to county, state and 
 federal offices increase the voting power of the citizen in an ascending ratio, 
 in electing the upper house. Thus, if a vote is regarded as equivalent to fifty 
 dollars of taxes paid, then one who had been twice a State Senator or Repre- 
 sentative might have two extra votes, and two more for each second additional 
 re-election. One who had been twice a Representative in Congress might cast 
 ten extra votes, and ten more for every third re-election. One who has been 
 twice a Judge of the Circuit Court might cast five votes, and five more for 
 each third re-election. A Governor or United States Senator should cast say 
 twenty-five votes, an ex-Vice-President fifty, and an ex-President one hun- 
 dred votes only, of course, in the election of a member of the upper branch 
 of any state or city legislature. Service for five years in the army might 
 entitle to an extra vote, with an increase for officers. Members of the legal
 
 80 Responsible Government. 
 
 profession should cast three votes, and those who had completed a classical 
 course in any college in which constitutional law and political economy were 
 taught might cast one extra vote. The details of the plan are immaterial so 
 long as the principle is preserved that the three elements of Capital, Expe- 
 rience in government, and Intelligence or Culture, are to be represented as 
 v accurately as a Constitutional Convention in its wisdom may be able to 
 provide. 
 
 At present, neither in our state nor city governments does the boasted and 
 vaunted division into two houses serve any useful purpose whatever. The 
 two being chosen in the same manner, represent the same elements and inte- 
 rests and are duplicates of each other. But if one represented heads only, 
 and the other chiefly property and intelligence, they would efficiently offset 
 each other and check the drift toward a government by the worst. 
 
 The views here presented are essentially identical with those advocated by 
 Mr. Calhoun in his "Essay on Government," except that he confines himself 
 to the statement of a principle in constitutional government, while the fore- 
 going proposition seeks to supply the mechanism which will apply that prin- 
 ciple in practice. Mr. Calhoun's principle is, that all governments by mere 
 numerical majorities, are governments by ONE FOBCE, i. e., by that majority, 
 and hence that they tend toward absolutism, it being only necessary that the 
 majority party shall delegate their powers to, or submit to their usurpation by, 
 their chief, and the government forthwith becomes in effect a monarchy; and 
 even without this delegation it is always a despotism, governing by numerical 
 force, and not by compromise. He holds that government, to be enduring, 
 must be a compromise between different estates and interests, each having a 
 veto on the other. This he styles a concurrent majority, i. e., a concurrence 
 of two majorities the majority of numbers, and the majority of wealth, or 
 whatever the other represented interest may be. A government, by concur- 
 rent majorities alone deserves to be called constitutional. All governments 
 by mere numerical majorities are absolute, and not constitutional. He in- 
 stances Rome, where the plebian interest or estate, through its tribunes, was 
 given a veto on the action of the patricians, and vice versa; and Great Britain, 
 where capital in land is represented in the House of Lords, and the numerical 
 majority in the Commons. In the city government of Berlin there is a syste- 
 matic effort to represent capital in the upper house of the city legislature. 
 
 Of course it will be assumed by the inert class of politicians that no law 
 which lessens the relative power of the non-capitalist masses, compared with 
 that of the capitalist class, can now be passed, since it will require the favor- 
 able votes of the very class whose power it is designed to diminish. Certainly 
 the measure must be calculated to secure the votes of the majority of existing 
 voters. But after due agitation a plan could be devised essentially on the 
 foregoing principle which would secure the votes of the majority of existing 
 voters. The number whose power of voting would be increased by the above 
 plan would probably exceed half the total number. To these add the large 
 number of candid non-property holders whose sympathies are so far with the 
 property holding classes that they would vote for what they thought would
 
 Representation of Capital. 81 
 
 take the governing power away from the incompetent, whether they themselves 
 would have their voting power increased or not. Few men are more con 
 scious of the contemptibleness of rabble government than the men who par 
 ticipate in it. They are, as a rule, more willing to admit their own unfitness 
 than the more educated and responsible classes are to assert it. By all these 
 means the power to remodel our constitutions in the interest of a due and 
 proper representation of capital, and so as to secure for it a far more ade- 
 quate and just representation than it has ever before had, is to-day within 
 the reach of the capitalist classes, who, I believe, will be found to be the 
 majority of all voters. 
 
 I would not, by such or any means, seek to overcome the just and natural 
 expansion of that principle of association which finds its highest and most 
 marked manifestations in the various forms of communism. I would only 
 seek to place side by side with it a principle which is to it what the mascu- 
 line is to the feminine, what the positive is to the negative, what law is to 
 liberty, what science is to mystery, viz: its better and truer half its more 
 perfect self.
 
 A-ISTNOTTNCEMENT. 
 
 Pro/. DENSLOW will probably lecture on the topics 
 embraced in the within pamphlet during the coming year. 
 ADDRESS : 
 
 SLAYTON'S LYCEUM BUREAU, 
 
 CHICAGO, \\.\,.