" should learn that if
they wish to command the services of men of honor they must accord them
honorable treatment; the rule now is for the party to which they belong
to give them a half-hearted support while suffering all other parties
to slander and insult them. The action of the President of the French
Republic in these disgusting circumstances is exceptional and unusual
only in respect of his courage in expressly resenting his wrong.
Everywhere the unreasonable complaint is heard that good men will not
"go into politics;" everywhere the ignorant and malignant masses and
their no less malignant and hardly less ignorant leaders and
spokesmen, having sown the wind of reasonless obstruction and partisan
vilification, are reaping the whirlwind of misrule. So far as
concerns the public service, gentlemen are mostly on a strike against
introduction of the mud-machine. This high-minded political workman,
Casimir-Perier, never showed to so noble advantage as in gathering up
his tools and walking out.

It may be, and a million times has been, urged that abstention from
activity in public affairs by men of brains and character leaves the
business of government in the hands of the incapable and the vicious. In
whose hands, pray, in a republic does it logically belong? What does
the theory of "representative government" affirm? What is the lesson
of every netherward extension of the suffrage? What do we mean by
permitting it to "broaden slowly down" to lower and lower intelligences
and moralities?--what but that stupidity and vice, equally with virtue
and wisdom, are entitled to a voice in political affairs, a finger in
the public pie?

A person that is fit to vote is fit to be voted for. He who is competent
for the high and difficult function of choosing an officer of the State
is competent to serve the State as an officer. To deny him the right is
illogical and unjust. Participation in Government can not be at the same
time a privilege and a duty, and he who claims it as a privilege must
not speak of another's renunciation (whereby himself is more highly
privileged) as "shirking." With every retirement from politics increased
power passes to those who remain. Shall they protest? Shall they, also,
who have retired? Who else is to protest? The complaint of "incivism"
would be more rational if there were some one by whom it could
reasonably be made.

My advice to slandered officials has ever been: "Resign." The public
officia