we complain,
and on great occasions the community arises in its wrath, and visits
summary punishment on the offenders of the hour, and then relapses
into chronic grumbling until grievances sufficiently accumulate to
stir it again to action.

What is the remedy for this state of affairs? Shall there be no more
political parties, and shall we shatter the political machinery which,
bad as it is, is far better than no machinery at all? Shall we embrace
nihilism as our creed, because we have practical communism forced upon
us as the consequence of jobbery, and the imposition of unjust taxes?

No, let us rather learn the lesson of the Bridge. Instead of
attempting to restrict suffrage, let us try to educate the voters;
instead of disbanding parties, let each citizen within the party
always vote, but never for a man who is unfit to hold office. Thus
parties, as well as voters, will be organized on the basis of
intelligence.

But what man is fit to hold office? Only he who regards political
office as a public trust, and not as a private perquisite to be used
for the pecuniary advantage of himself or his family, or even his
party. Is there intelligence enough in these cities, if thus organized
within the parties, to produce the result which we desire? Why, the
overthrow of the Tweed Ring was conclusive evidence of the
preponderance of public virtue in the city of New York. In no other
country in the world, and in no other political system than one which
provides for and secures universal suffrage, would such a sudden and
peaceful revolution have been possible. The demonstration of this fact
was richly worth the twenty-five or thirty millions of dollars which
the thieves had stolen. Thereafter, and thenceforth, there could be no
doubt whether our city population, heterogeneous as it is, contains
within itself sufficient virtue for its own preservation. Let it never
be forgotten that the remedy is complete; that it is ever present;
that no man ought to be deprived of the opportunity of its exercise;
and that, if it be exercised, the will of the community can never be
paralyzed. Our safety and our success rest on the ballot in the hands
of freemen at the polls, deliberately deposited, never for an unworthy
man, but always with a profound sense of the responsibility which
should govern every citizen in the exercise of this fundamental right.

If the lesson of the Bridge, which I have thus sought to enforce,
shall revive the co