privileges, and wealth, make up the first; and character, ability, and culture, the second. Excepting only the distinctions of wealth, we have abolished the artificial inequality, and now we are doing what we can to abolish the real one. Vaguely and half unconsciously, but every day more and more, the masses hug the flattering illusion that one man is essentially about as good as another. They will not deny that there is great difference in the quality of horses or dogs, but they refuse to see it in their own genus. A jockey may be a democrat in the street, but he is sure to be an aristocrat in the stable. And yet the essential difference between man and man is incomparably greater than that between horse and horse, or dog and dog; though, being chiefly below the surface, the general eye can hardly see it.

Mountains and mole-hills, deserts and fertile valleys, and all the universal inequality of Nature, are but types of inequality in

To level the outward world would turn it into barrenness, and to level human minds to one stature would make them barren as well. The history of the progress of mankind is the history of its leading minds. The masses, left to themselves, are hardly capable of progress, except material progress, and even that imperfectly. Through the long course of history, a few men, to be counted by scores or by tens, have planted in the world the germs of a growth whose beneficent vitality has extended itself through all succeeding ages; and any one of these men outweighs in value to mankind myriads of nobles, citizens, and peasants, who have fought or toiled in their generation, and then rotted into oblivion. Condé used to say that a thousand frogs were not worth one salmon. The saying, as he meant it, was false, but there is a sense in which it is true, though it tells the truth but feebly and imperfectly.

The highest man may comprehend the lowest, but the lowest can no more comprehend the highest than if he belonged to another order of beings, as for some purposes he practically does. A single human mind may engender thoughts which the combined efforts of millions of lower intelligences cannot conceive. This is not the faith of Demos. In his vague way, he fancies that aggregated ignorance and weakness will bear the fruits of wisdom. He begins to think that science, thought, and study, are old-time illusions; that everybody has a right to form his own

opinion as to whether the world is round or flat, and that the votes of the majority ought to settle the question.

We have said that intrinsic equality is inconsistent with liberty. It is so because, in order to produce it, very unequal opportunities of development must be granted to different kinds of mind and character, and an even distributive justice refused to human nature. The highest must be repressed and the lowest stimulated in order to produce a level average. In such an attempt no political or social system can completely succeed; but in so far as it tends this way it is false and pernicious. If it could succeed, or approach to success, it would be an outrage upon humanity. Asiatic despotisms have done so as nearly, perhaps, as is possible; but the Amuraths and Bajazets will hardly be thought fit examples for emulation. Democracy can no more succeed in producing a level than they did, but it can do prodigious mischief by trying to produce one. It may pretend that it is only "leveling upward," but this phrase of pleasing sound means leveling downward also; for, if the lower strata of humanity are raised as high as their nature and the inexorable conditions of human life will permit, there will still be no equality till the upper strata are pushed down to meet them.

A society where liberty was complete, and where all men had equal opportunities of development, according to their several qualities, would show immense diversities of all kinds; like the vegetable world, where the tallest trees and the humblest shrubs, plants climbing and crawling, poisonous and wholesome, all grow out of the same soil and are formed of the same essential elements. So the essential elements of human nature are the same, but mixed in such different proportion, and controlled by such different tendencies, that they often result less in resemblances than in contrasts.

Shall we look for an ideal society in that which tends to a barren average and a weary uniformity, treats men like cattle, counts them by the head, and gives them a vote apiece without asking whether or not they have the sense to use it; or in that which recognizes the inherent differences between man and man, gives the preponderance of power to character and intelligence, yet removes artificial barriers, keeps circulation free through all its parts, and rewards merit wherever it appears with added in

fluence? This, of course, is a mere idea, never to be fully realized; but it makes vast difference at what a republic aims, and whether it builds on numbers or on worth. The methods by which it tries to reach its mark may be more or less effective, but it is all-important that the mark should be a true one.

The success of an experiment of indiscriminate suffrage hangs on the question whether the better part of the community is able to outweigh the worse. There are certain social conditions, rarely to be found except in small communities and a civilization not the most advanced, in which this question may be answered confidently in the affirmative; but, as numbers, wealth, and luxury increase, the difficulty grows with them. It is aggravated by the fact, generally acknowledged by those most competent to judge of it, that intellectual development and high civilization are not favorable to fecundity, so that the unintelligent classes, except when in actual destitution, multiply faster than those above them. Thus the power of ignorance tends to increase, or rather the power of the knaves who are always at hand to use it.

A New England village of the olden time-that is to say, of some forty years ago—would have been safely and well governed by the votes of every man in it; but, now that the village has grown into a populous city, with its factories and workshops, its acres of tenement-houses, and thousands and ten thousands of restless workmen, foreigners for the most part, to whom liberty means license and politics means plunder, to whom the public good is nothing and their own most trivial interests everything, who love the country for what they can get out of it, and whose ears are open to the promptings of every rascally agitator, the case is completely changed, and universal suffrage becomes a questionable blessing. Still we are told it is an inalienable right. Suppose for an instant that it were so, wild as the supposition is. The community has rights as well as the individual, and it has also duties. It is both its right and its duty to provide good government for itself, and, the moment the vote of any person or class of persons becomes an obstacle to its doing so, this person or class forfeits the right to vote; for, where the rights of a part clash with the rights of the whole, the former must give way.

When a man has not sense to comprehend the questions at issue, know a bad candidate from a good one, or see his own true

interests-when he cares not a farthing for the general good, and will sell his vote for a dollar-when, by a native instinct, he throws up his cap at the claptrap declamation of some lying knave, and turns with indifference or dislike from the voice of honesty and reason-then his vote becomes a public pest. Somebody uses him, and profits by him. Probably it is a demagogue, possibly a priest, or possibly both. In any case, it is folly to call him a free agent. His inalienable right may perhaps be valuable to him for the bribe he gets out of it; but it makes him a nuisance and a danger to the state. It causes pulpit, platform, and press, to condone his vices, and debauch the moral sense of the people by discovering objects of sympathy in vagabonds, thieves, and ruffians. It gives power to the communistic attack on property, and makes it difficult to deal with outbreaks of brutal violence against which even humanity itself demands measures of the most stern and exemplary repression.

Universal suffrage, imposed upon the country by the rivalries of contending parties bidding against each other for votes, has since been promoted into a "principle," regarded by many persons as almost sacred. This so-called principle, however, is by no means of universal application, and, when applied in the wrong place, at once reduces itself to absurdity. Distribute ballot-boxes among the subjects of King John of Abyssinia or those of the Khan of Kelat, and set them to govern themselves by the full exercise of their inalienable rights, and our panacea would result in anarchy. Universal suffrage is applicable only to those peoples, if such there are, who by character and training are prepared for it; and the only rational question is as to the degree of preparation that will serve the purpose. In any case, preparation must be the work of time. There must be hereditary traditions of self-government. Universal suffrage exists in some European nations, and exists along with a high degree of civilization and prosperity; but in these the traditions and material forces of a centralized government are extremely strong, and the evils of an ignorant or vicious vote are held in check by powers of resistance which are unknown here. Yet even in these countries the final results of the experiment are, and well may be, the objects of deep anxiety.

We are told that, to make a bad voter a good one, we have

only to educate him. His defect, however, is not merely intellectual. It consists also in the want of the feeling that his own interests are connected with those of the community, and in the weakness or absence of the sense of moral and political duty. The evil is not to be cured by reading, writing, and arithmetic. The public school may cram his brain with all it is capable of containing, and he will be no whit the better citizen for the process. It might train instead of cramming him, lay the foundation of a sound morality, and teach him something of political and social duty; but such education is more difficult than that now in vogue, and demands more judgment and ability in those who conduct it. To teach the teacher must be the first step; and here, as in everything else connected with public education, we find ourselves moving in a vicious circle. To whom have we intrusted these high and delicate interests? They demand the best intelligence and the best conscience of the community; and yet their control rests, in the last resort, with legislatures and municipal bodies representing in part that very public which needs education the most-wretched, wire-pulling demagogues, ignorant as the constituencies that chose them, reckless of public duty, and without the faintest notion of what true education is. In such education rests the only hope of democracies; but it is vain to look for it unless the wiser half of the public can regain its virtual control.

The results thus far of our present style of popular education are not flattering. That portion of young America which has sprung from humble and ignorant parentage ought to show its effects most conspicuously; but it may be doubted whether, as a general rule, the young Irish-American is a better or safer citizen than his parent from Cork. He can read; but he reads nothing but sensation stories and scandalous picture-papers, which fill him with preposterous notions, and would enfeeble a stronger brain than his and debauch a sounder conscience. He is generally less industrious than his sire, and equally careless of the public good.

Those who bray loudest for inalienable rights extol the ballot as an education in itself, capable of making good citizens out of the poorest material. Under certain conditions, there is a measure of truth in this. An untaught and reckless voter, enveloped by honest and rational ones, is apt to change greatly for the bet