garding the operations of city departments. And yet this is the information which it is the duty of every New York citizen to procure, and which today he is without the means of procuring save at the cost of more time than he can afford to spare from his business occupations.

The university of every large city could undoubtedly be enlisted in support of such endowment, and the public be thereby kept informed regarding every important item of interest, whether in science, in sociology, in political economy, in medicine, or in law. Were it known that such information emanated from the pen of a university professor and was published under the responsibility of the university to which he belonged, value would be attached to it which cannot be allowed to matter of the same kind now published in Sunday editions. It must not be supposed that it is advised to confide the editing of such a paper to a university or to the faculty of a university. Its editors must be men as thoroughly equipped for journalism as those who now edit the great papers of the country; but as regards those subjects which can best be dealt with by men whose special duty it is to keep informed regarding them through the business of lecturing upon them to which they devote their lives, it is submitted that the university faculty could render signal service. Nor must the above suggestion be supposed to imply that an endowed paper would immediately secure the confidence of the community; it would have to win its way just

as any other paper, though it would have in its favour the fact of financial independence and the co-operation of a staff such as no other newspaper in the country could command. Such a paper would not in any sensible degree affect the circulation of existing papers, for it would furnish its information only once a week, and it would seek to be free from that partisanship which makes the sale of most of those now on the market. Moreover, it would undertake to publish matter that would not commercially pay, and abstain from publishing matter which is cheap and popular. At any rate, were such a paper in existence it ought to be possible for a citizen to know the facts upon which he is called upon to express his opinion; it ought to be possible for him to understand the working of the city departments without having to sift this information out of the unintelligible columns of the city records; and he ought at any rate to be left without excuse if he failed to know the issues upon which he is required to vote. By such an endowment, education would not stop short at a moment when for the purposes of good citizenship it is most needed, but would extend through adolescence to every day of a busy man's life. That it would serve to greatly facilitate and shorten the labour of getting information of current events, will be admitted by those who now laboriously sift it out of the columns of many newspapers; and all whose occupations make it impossible for them to read. more than one paper a day cannot but recognise

that it would serve as an admirable antidote to the dose of prejudice which they now daily consume. Nor can it be believed that it would fail to have a beneficent influence upon its contemporaries. While commercial competition is acting to drag down the general standard, such a paper could not but do something to hold that standard up; it would, at all events, serve to inculcate the great moral lesson that journalism, like public office and inherited wealth, cannot any longer be regarded as private property, but must be recognised to involve a solemn trust.

CHAPTER XIII.

PARTY GOVERNMENT.

PARTISANSHIP is at once the mainspring of popular government and its bane. No great issue has ever been pushed to a conclusion until it has either created a party or been adopted by one already in existence; but just in the same way as the human institution to which religion gives rise and through which it operates, by falling into the hands. of designing men, tends to defeat the very object for which it was organised, so the machinery necessary to the propagation of a political idea, however sound, tends to outlive the issue for which it was constructed, in order to serve private ends at the expense of the common weal. It has been already pointed out that the Republican party, organised for the purpose of suppressing slavery and resisting the exorbitant demands of the subsequently seceding States, perpetuated itself in power by keeping alive sectional animosity; and after it was defeated upon this issue, restored itself to power by promising the labourer high wages under a protective tariff, thereby substituting an entirely new issue for the original one which brought it into existence.

Whether or not the Republican party was justified in continuing to appeal to Northern sentiment against the South long after the South had, to all appearances, laid down its arms, it is clear that the temptation to do so would be irresistible if unscrupulous party managers thought that they could thereby maintain themselves in power; and although there undoubtedly is a remote connection between protective tariff and strong central government, it is difficult to believe that the party created for pushing the issue concluded by the war was in any sense obliged by its convictions to take up the cause of protection. It is much easier to believe that the cause of protection was taken up by those in control of the Republican machine because it was an issue likely to furnish them with the funds and popularity indispensable to their maintenance in power. And so the machinery of party organisation constructed for the purpose of advocating the cause of liberty and patriotism was made to serve the private purposes of a few political leaders. This estimate of the course pursued by the Republican party may seem unfair to those who believe as sincerely in protection as they did before in the abolition of slavery and the maintenance of the Union; to these, however, it is respectfully submitted that it is quite possible for others of their fellowcitizens to have been as earnest as themselves in their desire for the abolition of slavery and for the maintenance of the Union, and yet to be equally sincere in their belief in free trade. These have a