can be made honest by machinery--that human
character is a matter of gearing, ratchets and dials! One would give
something to know how it feels to be like that. A mind so constituted
must be as happy in its hope as a hen incubating a nest-ful of porcelain
door-knobs. It lives in rapturous contemplation of a world of its own
creation--a world where public morality and political good order are
to be had by purchase at the machine-shop. In that delectable world
religion is superfluous; the true high priest is the mechanical
engineer; the minor clergy are the village blacksmiths. It is rather
a pity that so fine and fair a sphere should prosper only in the
attenuated ether of an idiot's understanding.

Voting-machines are doubtless well enough; they save labor and enable
the statesmen of the street to know the result within a few minutes of
the closing of the polls--whereby many are spared to their country who
would otherwise incur fatal disorders by exposure to the night air
while assisting in awaiting the returns. But a voting-machine that human
ingenuity can not pervert, human ingenuity can not invent.

That is true, too, of laws. Your statesman of a mental stature somewhat
overtopping that of the machine-person puts his faith in law.
Providence has designed to permit him to be persuaded of the efficacy
of statutes--good, stringent, carefully drawn statutes definitively
repealing all the laws of nature in conflict with any of their
provisions. So the poor devil (I am writing of Mr. Legion) turns for
relief from law to law, ever on the stool of repentance, yet ever
unfouling the anchor of hope. By no power cm earth can his indurated
understanding be penetrated by the truth that his woful state is due,
not to any laws of his own, nor to any lack of them, but to his rascally
refusal to obey the Golden Rule. How long is it since we were all
clamoring for the Australian ballot law, which was to make a new Heaven
and a new earth? We have the Australian ballot law and the same old
earth smelling to the same old Heaven. Writhe upon the triangle as we
may, groan out what new laws we will, the pitiless thong will fall upon
our bleeding backs as long as we deserve it. If our sins, which are
scarlet, are to be washed as white as wool it must be in the tears of a
genuine contrition: our crocodile deliverances will profit us nothing.
We must stop chasing dollars, stop lying, stop cheating, stop ignoring
art, literature and all the r