w, and controlled, no one knows
by whom; but usually by demagogues, men who have some private or
personal purposes, for which they wish, through party to use the
government. Parties have no conscience, no responsibility, and their
very reason of being is, the usurpation and concentration of power.
The real practical tendency of universal suffrage is to democratic,
instead of an imperial, centralism. What is to guard against this
centralism? Not universal suffrage, for that tends to create it; and if
the government is left to it, the government becomes practically the
will of an ever shifting and irresponsible majority. Is the remedy in
written or paper constitutions? Party can break through them, and by
making the judges elective by party, for short terms, and re-eligible,
can do so with impunity. In several of the States, the dominant
majority have gained the power to govern at will, without any let or
hindrance. Besides, constitutions can be altered, and have been
altered, very nearly at the will of the majority. No mere paper
constitutions are any protection against the usurpations of party, for
party will always grasp all the power it can.

Yet the evil is not so great as it seems, for in most of the States the
principle of division of powers is carried into the bosom of the State
itself; in some States further than in others, but in all it obtains to
some extent. In what are called the New England States, the best
governed portion of the Union, each town is a corporation, having
important powers and the charge of all purely local matters--chooses
its own officers, manages its own finances, takes charge of its own
poor, of its own roads and bridges, and of the education of its own
children. Between these corporations and the State government are the
counties, that take charge of another class of interests, more general
than those under the charge of the town, but less general than those of
the State. In the great central and Northwestern States the same
system obtains, though less completely carried out. In the Southern
and Southwestern States, the town corporations hardly exist, and the
rights and interests of the poorer classes of persons have been less
well protected in them than in the Northern and Eastern States. But
with the abolition of slavery, and the lessening of the influence of
the wealthy slaveholding class, with the return of peace and the
revival of agricultural, industrial, and commercial