when such are the prevailing sentiments, we may safely assert that the influences of the business of government are degrading to those who participate in it. The perpetuity of complex free institutions such as ours can only be secured by a virtuous and intelligent public spirit, and is utterly incompatible with existing conditions. Corruption in municipal affairs, corruption at Harrisburg, corruption at Washington, if not notorious, is at all events so firmly believed in as to work all the reflex evil that its existence could occasion. The life of the state consists in its legislative and executive functions, and where these are vitiated at the source, there can be but little hope for the body politic. Such is our present condition—our institutions shaken to the very foundation, and every man looking anxiously to the future, asking how we may best escape the punishment which is at last meting out to us the fit return for our sin’s of omission and commission. Great is the vitality of political organizations based on the immutable principles of right and justice. Ours has been sorely tried by our own remissness, yet is it not past remedy, and that remedy is so simple and so easy of application, that our disgrace is the more poignant that it has not long since been attempted. If a comparatively small portion of the independent public would devote to this subject a few hours in the course of the year, they could take the management of politics, municipal, state and national, out of the hands of those who make it the basest of trades, and who only hold it on sufferance. It is simply our supineness that can enable them to inflict on us the grievous wrong of a venal legislature or a corrupt municipal administration. Let us shake off that supineness, and we shall be surprised to find how fragile are the bonds that have tied the nation down, while adventurers of every party have been disputing over its spoils as their birth-right. The foundation of our political edifice is to be found in the local sub-divisions of election districts. It is by manipulating these minute fractions of the community, that the professional politicians perfect their schemes and gain their ends. The
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