bar-rooms. Turn now to the august
spectacle of a Government of the people, by the people, for the people,
as it is understood in the city of San Francisco. Professor Bryce's book
will tell you that every American citizen over twenty-one years of age
possesses a vote. He may not know how to run his own business, control
his wife, or instil reverence into his children, may be pauper,
half-crazed with drink, bankrupt, dissolute, or merely a born fool; but
he has a vote. If he likes, he can be voting most of his time--voting
for his State Governor, his municipal officers, local option, sewage
contracts, or anything else of which he has no special knowledge.

Once every four years he votes for a new President. In his spare moments
he votes for his own judges--the men who shall give him justice. These
are dependent on popular favour for re-election inasmuch as they are
but chosen for a term of years--two or three, I believe. Such a
position is manifestly best calculated to create an independent and
unprejudiced administrator. Now this mass of persons who vote is divided
into two parties--Republican and Democrat. They are both agreed in
thinking that the other part is running creation (which is America) into
red flame. Also the Democrat as a party drinks more than the Republican,
and when drunk may be heard to talk about a thing called the Tariff,
which he does not understand, but which he conceives to be the bulwark
of the country or else the surest power for its destruction. Sometimes
he says one thing and sometimes another, in order to contradict the
Republican, who is always contradicting himself. And this is a true and
lucid account of the forepart of American politics. The behind-part is
otherwise.

Since every man has a vote and may vote on every conceivable thing, it
follows that there exist certain wise men who understand the art of
buying up votes retail, and vending them wholesale to whoever wants them
most urgently. Now an American engaged in making a home for himself has
not time to vote for turn-cocks and district attorneys and cattle of
that kind, but the unemployed have much time because they are always on
hand somewhere in the streets. They are called "the boys," and form a
peculiar class. The boys are young men; inexpert in war, unskilled in
labour; who have neither killed a man, lifted cattle, or dug a well. In
plain English, they are just the men in the streets who can always be
trusted to rally round any