bullies and bravoes, half persuaded that a republic is the contemptible rule of the mob, and secretly longing for a strong man and a splendid and vigorous despotism, then remember it is not a government mastered by ignorance, it is a government betrayed by intelligence. It is not the victory of the slums, it is the surrender of the schools. It is not that bad men are politically shrewd, it is that good men are political infidels and cowards.

The challenge is fair, and I answer at once that there are two practicable and perfectly effective remedies for the monster evil which threatens our politics. One is individual and immediate. The other is general and radical. The first, which is immediately available, is a short and easy method with the "machine," requiring no elaborate organization, open to every voter, a method which, if put in force by every man who wishes to strike a blow for decent politics, would summarily overthrow the machine in the least time and with the smallest of weapons, for the weapon is but a pencil or a pen, and the time is only a moment necessary for a scratch.

But useful as scratching is as a corrective, it does not strike at the heart of the machine, and it is therefore only a corrective and not a radical remedy. That can be found only by finding the source of the power of the machine, and that source is official patronage. It is the command of millions of the public money spent in public administration, the control of the vast labyrinth of place, with its emoluments, the system which makes the whole civil service, to the least detail, and the most insignificant position, the spoils of party victory. It is this system which perverts necessary party organization into intolerable party despotism. It is upon this that the hierarchy of the machine is erected. The spoils system compels every voter in the country either to devote his whole time to politics, as those who live by politics do, or to lose all practical political power whatever. Instead, therefore, of being essential to party government, the spoils system is hostile to the very object of party in a free government, and destroys the principle of government itself. In the State of New York and in the State of Pennsylvania, this system has already so far sup

planted the American principle—the fundamental principle of liberty-that the important Republican question in New York is not, What does the party wish, but what does Mr. Conkling say? And in Pennsylvania, not, What is the conviction of the party, but what does Mr. Cameron mean to do?

Once make universal at every point and throughout the country, both in the state and national service, the system which has been adopted for a year in the New York post-office and the New York custom house, in which three quarters of the revenue of the country is collected, and the machine would disappear. The administration of President Hayes has been arraigned and sharply criticised for inexplicable inconsistencies and for surrender to the evil system; but when its faults are all told, it still remains true that this administration has done far more for the actual reform of the civil service than any other in our history.

Courage, then, gentlemen, and forward! Let us, who believe this reform to be a measure of the most vital importance, not a panacea for all political ills, not the harbinger of the millennium, but the most practicable method of remedying immense abuse and averting imminent dangers, remember that if every step of political progress has been secured by party, yet that individual conviction and independence have made parties. Our fathers were willing subjects of the crown so long as the crown obeyed the law. But when the king became a despot, they shook off king and crown together. We are Americans, born of freedom, and we are recreant Americans if we do not hold ourselves as much the enemies of the despotism of a party as our fathers were enemies of the tyranny of a king.

NATION BUILDING, PROGRESS AND

PATRIOTISM

THE

Home and Education

HE organized household, with its system of government and its domestic economy, forms a miniature society, a school of discipline. Parental affection supplies care, patience, and loving persistence, by which alone the best results can be secured. Children are trained to prompt instinctive habits, which are often more useful than reasoned conduct; they learn to practice subordination and obedience, which are so necessary in social tasks of coöperation; in their relations with brothers, sisters, and parents, they are taught principles of justice, and sentiments of courtesy and kindness, which make true social life possible; they are specially trained, usually with the aid of schools and other institutions, to perform certain of the tasks which society imposes upon its members, and thus are prepared to take their places in the social organism.

SMALL AND VINCENT.

The man who kindles the fire on the hearth-stone of an honest and righteous home burns the best incense to liberty. He does not love mankind less who loves his neighbor most. Exalt the citizen. As the state is the unit of government, he is the unit of the state. Teach him that his home is his castle, and his sovereignty rests beneath his hat. Make him selfrespecting, self-reliant, and responsible. Let him lean on the state for nothing that his own arm can do, and on the government for nothing that his state can do. Let him cultivate

independence to the point of sacrifice, and learn that humble things with unbartered liberty are better than splendors bought with its price. HENRY W. GRADY.

The fireside, the pulpit, the school, and the shop must be linked and leagued together. Each must help every other. Home must connect itself in all its firm authorities, sweet affections, and tender influences, with pulpit, school, and shop. Pulpit must send its reverence, faith, and hope, its lofty moral and religious standards, and its sacred magnetisms into home, school, and shop. School must reach, with its habits of honest, concentrated, and continuous thinking, its wealth of learning and its broad horizons, pulpit, home, and shop; and shop must put its knowledge of men and things, its tact, industry, and economy, and its wholesome common sense into the administrations of the family, the utterances of the pulpit, and the instructions of the school. JOHN H. VINCENT.

THE

The Nature of Law

HE law does not say to a man, "Work, and I will reward you;" but it says to him, "Work, and by stopping the hand that would take them from you, I will insure to you the fruits of your labor, its natural and sufficient reward, which, without me, you could not preserve." If industry creates, it is the law which preserves; if, at the first moment, we owe everything to labor, at the second, and every succeeding moment, we owe everything to the law.

JEREMY BENTHAM.

Law and arbitrary power are in eternal enmity. Name me a magistrate, and I will name property; name me power and I will name protection. It is a contradiction in terms, it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in politics, to say that any man can have arbitrary power.

In every patent of office the duty is included. For what else does a magistrate exist? To suppose for power is an

absurdity in idea. Judges are guided and governed by the eternal laws of justice, to which we are all subject. We may bite our chains, if we will; but we shall be made to know ourselves, and be taught that man is born to be governed by law, and he that will substitute will in the place of it is an enemy to God. EDMUND BURKE,

The Anglo-Saxon race, from which we inherit so much that is valuable in our character as well as our institutions, has been remarkable in all its history for a love of law and order. I but repeat the language of the Supreme Court of the United States when I say that "in this country the law is supreme." No man is so high as to be above law. No officer of the government may disregard it with impunity. To this inborn and native regard for law, a governing power, we are largely indebted for the wonderful success and prosperity of our people, for the security of our rights; and, when the highest law to which we pay this homage is the Constitution of the United States, the history of the world has furnished no such wonder of a prosperous, happy, civil government.

SAMUEL F. MILLER.

Implicit obedience to law and the mandates of duly organized courts is the vital principle of free, elective government. Upon it rest the pillars of the Republic. No grievance, however great, can justify a resort to lawless violence for its redress. If the time shall ever come when obedience to law can be maintained only by the strong arm of military power, despotism or anarchy is near at hand. It is for the living generations to see to it that the fruits of free constitutional government, garnered by the sacrifices of the heroic dead, are not wasted in the future, and that the priceless legacy of liberty bequeathed by our fathers shall be transmitted unimpaired to coming times.

GALUSHA A. GROW.

No man's property is safe, and no man's welfare is assured, where justice is denied to the poor, or where crime goes unpunished; no state can prosper, however rich the land or varied