cal legislatures would remain
reasonably honest. But what might come with long use and practice, long
exposure to temptation, it is not easy to say. Some things occur in the
colonies which are not comforting. If, then, the corruption in American
politics be great, the evil is due rather to the system than to any
inherent inferiority in the native honesty of the people. Their
integrity, if it falls, has the excuse of abundant temptation.

The most instructive experience, I think, which I myself had of the
disregard of morality in the realm of municipal politics was received
when I associated myself, sentimentally rather than actively, with a
movement at a certain election directed towards the defeat of one who
was probably the most corrupt alderman in what was at the time perhaps
the corruptest city in the United States. Of the man's entire depravity,
from a political point of view, there was not the least question among
either his friends or his enemies. Nominally a Democrat, his vote and
policy were never guided by any other consideration than those of his
own pocket. On an alderman's salary (which he spent several times over
in his personal expenditure each year), without other business or
visible means of making money, he had grown wealthy--wealthy enough to
make his contributions to campaign funds run into the thousands of
dollars,--wealthy enough to be able always to forget to take change for
a five-dollar or a ten-dollar bill when buying anything in his own
ward,--wealthy enough to distribute regularly (was it five hundred or a
thousand?) turkeys every Thanksgiving Day among his constituents. No one
pretended to suggest that his money was drawn from any other source than
from the public funds, from blackmail, and from the sale of his vote and
influence in the City Council. In that Council he had held his seat
unassailably for many years through all the shifting and changing of
parties in power. But a spirit of reform was abroad and certain
public-spirited persons decided that it was time that the scandal of his
continuance in office should be stopped. The same conclusion had been
arrived at by various campaign managers and bodies of independent and
upright citizens on divers preceding occasions, without any result worth
mentioning. But at last it seemed that the time had come. There were
various encouraging signs and portents in the political heavens and all
auguries were favourable. There were, it is true, experie