the web that looks so familiar and ordinary in the dry light of every-day. Just as we are flattering ourselves that the old spirit of sorcery is laid, behold the tables are tipping and the floors drumming all over Christendom. The faculty of wonder is not defunct, but is only getting more and more emancipated from the unnatural service of terror, and restored to its proper function as a minister of delight. A higher mode of belief is the best exorciser, because it makes the spiritual at one with the actual world instead of hostile, or at best alien. It has been the grossly material interpretations of spiritual doctrine that have given occasion to the two extremes of superstition and unbelief. While the resurrection of the body has been insisted on, that resurrection from the body which is the privilege of all has been forgotten. Superstition in its baneful form was largely due to the enforcement by the Church of arguments that involved a petitio principii, for it is the miserable necessity of all false logic to accept of very ignoble allies. Fear became at length its chief expedient for the maintenance of its power; and as there is a beneficent necessity laid upon a majority of mankind to sustain and perpetuate the order of things they are born into, and to make all new ideas manfully prove their right, first, to be at all, and then to be heard, many even superior minds dreaded the tearing away of vicious accretions as dangerous to the whole edifice of religion and society. But if this old ghost be fading away in what we regard as the dawn of a better day, we may console ourselves by thinking that perhaps, after all, we are not so much wiser than our ancestors. The rappings, the trance mediums, the visions of hands without bodies, the sounding of musical instruments without visible fingers, the miraculous inscriptions on the naked flesh, the enlivenment of furniture, we have invented none of them, they are all heirlooms. There is surely room for yet another schoolmaster, when a score of seers advertise themselves in Boston newspapers. And if the metaphysicians can never rest till they have taken their watch to pieces and have arrived at a happy positivism as to its structure, though at the risk of bringing it to a no-go, we may be sure that the majority will always take more satisfaction in seeing its hands mysteriously move on, even if they should err a little as to the precise time of day established by the astronomical observatories.

IN the introductory chapter to his treatise on Liberty Mr. Mill points out the fact, that, in a government " of all by all," "the people who exercise the power are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised, and the self-government spoken of is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest." In fact, self-government means the absolute power of the many over the few. Who are the

many? In our own country the negroes and " poor white

trash" of the South, the mass of foreign emigrants, "the dangerous classes" in our cities, the unskilled laborers, the ignorant generally, who represent the physical force of the community. The many include much that is morally good, much also of depravity and vice caused by the weakness and temptations of ignorance and poverty. And who are the few? In a country like ours, which offers such a boundless field and such ample rewards to intelligent industry, they are a large class, though unable to cope in numbers with the former. They are the men of letters and science and high culture; they are the men of fortune and leisure and refined manners and elegant tastes; they are the owners of property, from the millionnaire down to him whose modest means, though not included in the income tax, are enough to give him the feeling of independence and self-respect which property confers, — a "stake in the hedge" that protects the rights of all. The few are the men of business and enterprise who direct the commerce, the finance, the manufactures, and agriculture of the country from the great capitalist down to the small trader, from the farmer who cultivates and improves a thousand acres to the cottager with ten. They are the men whose thought creates the wealth of the country, who lay the railroad track through the wilderness, who build and adorn cities, who found libraries and colleges, churches and charities, who encourage all the arts by which civilized is distinguished from rude and barren life.

These men are out-voted. They pay the taxes which are imposed by the majority, so that the maxim that taxation

should be founded on representation is virtually violated. They have, no doubt, commanding influence over those questions about which educated and intelligent men differ in opinion, because they only think about such questions at all, and because the press must represent their views or represent nothing, and must address them or address nobody. But over the primary, essential principles upon which all rights and all security depend, and about which enlightened men do not differ, they have little direct power. They are the minority, the governed, and all that they possess is held by sufferance and permission, and not by right and authority.

Heretofore, however, the majority has not proved an unjust or oppressive master. Traditionary habits of thought have so far prevailed that rights have been, if not universally, so generally secure, that confidence in the supremacy of order and law has been maintained, and has caused such a rapid and flourishing growth of prosperity throughout our country, that we ourselves, in common with all the world, behold it with wonder. The war, however, and the events growing out of it, and the chaos of opinion and passion now surging around us, have made many more than the philosophic few thoughtful and alarmed. A feeling of distrust in the future is pervading society. Many indications prove that the idea is rapidly gaining ground that political power is in the wrong place, and that universal suffrage threatens the country with terrible calamities.

With this idea is connected the question, How is power to be put in the right place? A fearful question, for on it hang the issues of life and death. How can power be taken out of the hands of the many? Not by votes, for they have the votes. Not by force, for they have the force. Can no answer be given to this question by our age of culture and civilization? Can it point only to the experience of the past, which tells us that power in the wrong place, like pent-up steam, bursts its way out with explosive violence, scattering around it wounds and death, though when well managed, like steam it gives motion to the machinery of industry and trade. It seems so, for no answer has been given. The only reply has been: "No, there is no hope. Political power, once granted, cannot be withdrawn, without a struggle fatal to liberty. The mere proposal would

destroy any public man or party by whom it was made. Therefore it never will be made. But may not the power, even of the multitude, be restrained and guided? That is the only question worth discussing, for all reasoning on the subject of government is conditioned by the possible. If this, too, be impossible, then we must prepare our minds to meet, as best we can, the perils of the future."

Out of this conviction have grown various plans to regulate the elective franchise: such as Mr. Hare's, of personal representation; and plural voting, by which persons of the superior classes have each more than one vote; and cumulative voting, by which all the votes that would otherwise be distributed among several candidates may be given to one;-schemes, all of them, whose purpose is to give representation to a minority, and thus curb the power of the many over the few.

These plans have their value. They should be carefully considered, as they may correct or mitigate the evils of our system. But they fail to provide for one thing which is necessary to the successful working of any plan, and that is, the nomination of fit persons for office.

It being impossible for the people themselves to administer their power, they must delegate it to agents and representatives. As the exercise of power over the interests of a great and civilized nation requires a degree of knowledge and ability superior to that of the average, men above the average must be chosen, or public affairs, and, as a consequence, private affairs too, would fall into hopeless ruin and confusion. A government of the ignorant, elected by the ignorant, would be an impossibility, except among savage tribes, and even they select for chiefs and rulers their ablest and strongest men. It follows, therefore, that, even under our system, which is the government of the few by the many, the trustees of power, those who for a time apply it to persons and things, and regulate both private and national interests, must be chosen from the enlightened few and not from the ignorant many.

They have been for the most part so chosen heretofore, and are so now, though less frequently than formerly. If the executive offices, the legislature, and the judiciary were filled by workingmen unable to read and write, or, possessing so

much knowledge, wholly ignorant of law and the nature of government and of the principles that control finance and commerce and industry,- men whose hands were familiar with the hod and the wheelbarrow, the anvil and the plough, and whose talk was only of bullocks, - it is clear that the life of such a government would soon cease amid the wrecks which it had created. Yet it would be a government of the ignorant many, by representatives chosen from the many. Instances of daily occurrence show that it is the sort of government towards which ours is tending. The executive office shows it; the Congressional debates show it; and Congress itself, where sit at this moment gamblers and pugilists, drunkards and criminals and men wholly destitute of every sort of knowledge proper for the place. This is the tendency, notwithstanding the high average of intelligence and practical ability, and, in some instances, the eminent talents, which Congress still displays. It is a tendency whose movement is likely to be hastened by growing influences. Means to resist it are therefore a pressing want of the time.

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The meaning of the phrase "the power of the people" is not easily defined. Theoretically, they are said to be sovereign over themselves; but this can be true only of a majority, and it is another way of saying that one portion has supreme power over another portion, unless all should agree. But how can this sovereignty be exerted? The people cannot make laws or execute them, cannot administer justice, cannot make war or impose taxes, or do any of the thousand things which yet must be done for their safety and welfare. They are obliged to choose or permit somebody to do these things for them, other words, to govern them. This somebody, whether composed of one or many, whether chosen or accepted or endured for a longer or shorter time, is the government to whom they have given or yielded their power. So that, as power which cannot be exerted does not exist, it is a fallacy to say that the people govern themselves, and the province of the government has been well described to be, to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves. But, it is said, the people when free govern themselves by their representatives, and in the power of choosing these consists their sovereignty. But can