_THE REIGN OF THE COMMON PEOPLE_

 

I do not suppose that if you were to go and look upon the experiment of

self-government in America you would have a very high opinion of it. I have not

either, if I just look upon the surface of things. Why, men will say: "It stands

to reason that 60,000,000 ignorant of law, ignorant of constitutional history,

ignorant of jurisprudence, of finance, and taxes and tariffs and forms of

currency--60,000,000 people that never studied these things--are not fit to

rule." Your diplomacy is as complicated as ours, and it is the most complicated

on earth, for all things grow in complexity as they develop toward a higher

condition. What fitness is there in these people? Well, it is not democracy

merely; it is a representative democracy. Our people do not vote in mass for

anything; they pick out captains of thought, they pick out the men that do know,

and they send them to the Legislature to think for them, and then the people

afterward ratify or disallow them.

 

But when you come to the Legislature I am bound to confess that the thing does

not look very much more cheering on the outside. Do they really select the best

men? Yes; in times of danger they do very generally, but in ordinary time,

"kissing goes by favor." You know what the duty of a regular

Republican-Democratic legislator is. It is to get back again next winter. His

second duty is what? His second duty is to put himself under that extraordinary

providence that takes care of legislators' salaries. The old miracle of the

prophet and the meal and the oil is outdone immeasurably in our days, for they