nce.

Stories of this class it would be easy to multiply indefinitely; but
again I say that it is not my desire to insist on the corruptness which
exists in American political life, but rather to explain to English
readers what the nature of that corruptness is and in what spheres of
the political life of the country it is able to find lodgment. What I
have endeavoured to illustrate is, first, how the peculiar political
system of the United States may, under some exceptional conditions, make
it possible for even the nomination of a President to be treated as a
matter of purchase, though the candidate himself and those who
immediately surround him may be of incorruptible integrity; second, the
unrivalled opportunities for bribery and other forms of political
wrong-doing furnished by the existence of the State legislatures, with
their eight thousand members, drawn necessarily from all ranks and
elements of the population, and possessing exceptional power over the
commercial affairs of the people of their respective States; and, third,
the methods by which, in certain large cities, power is attained, used,
and abused by the municipal "bosses" of all degrees, a condition of
affairs which is in large measure only made possible by the
identification of local and national politics and political parties. In
each case the conditions which make the corruption possible do not exist
in England, even though in the last named (the identification of local
with national politics and parties) the tendency in Great Britain is
distinctly in the direction of the American model. It is, perhaps, an
inevitable result of the working of the Anglo-Saxon "particularistic"
spirit, which ultimately rebels against any form of national government
or of national politics in which the individual and the individual of
each locality, is debarred from making his voice heard.

* * * * *

As for the corruptness which is supposed to exist in Congress itself,
this I believe to be largely a matter of partisan gossip and newspaper
talk. It may be that every Congress contains among its members a few
whose integrity is not beyond the temptation of a direct monetary bribe;
and it would perhaps be curious if it were not so. But it is the opinion
of the best informed that the direct bribery of a member of either the
Senate or the House is extremely rare. It happens, probably, all too
frequently that members consent to acquire at a lo