But it may be said, What can the government do with such an institution, more especially if it be necessarily under the commanding influence of another which the law cannot control? The answer is, that by giving the former a legal existence, it may impose upon it such checks and responsibilities as may at least greatly diminish the evils it now inflicts upon the country, perhaps render its normal action safe and beneficial; for if the nominating conventions could be made to represent the enlightened opinion and sober sentiment of the people, they would be safe and useful. If they were composed of men superior in education and position to the mass of the people, they would at least refuse to offer as candidates to the people persons wholly unworthy to exercise political power.

For this purpose we venture to suggest some such plan as this.

Let the law provide for the election, at stated periods, of boards of nominors, whose duty it shall be to receive and consider all applications for offices whose incumbents are chosen by the popular vote, and from them let it select a number of candidates to be presented to the people for their suf frages.

Let it be provided that none other than those so selected shall become candidates, and let the members of the board be sworn to the performance of this duty without fear, favor, or affection, and let adequate penalties be provided to prevent bribery or fraud. This would be merely to enforce by law the duties which these conventions now profess to perform without law.

The chief difficulty would be to annex to the office of nominor such qualifications as might raise those who filled it above dishonest motives, and secure in them identity of interest with all classes of the community, and at the same time sufficient education, that they might truly represent the enlightened opinion of the country. If these qualifications be fixed too high, the plan would be rejected, if too low, many of the present abuses would continue. In determining, therefore, what these qualifications should be, a compromise must be made between what is desirable and what is practicable. Among them are those which are indicated by race, nationality, age, education, and

property. Considering therefore the vast power connected with the office, we should say that to secure the best results, every person who held it should be a native-born American citizen of the white race, not less than forty years of age, educated according to a standard to be fixed by law, and possessed of an amount of income or property sufficient to elevate him above the class working for wages; and further, that during his term he should not hold any office under the national, State, or municipal government, nor for one year after the expiration of his term of service.

It is very true that nominating conventions are often composed of persons who satisfy all these conditions, but the majority of them as now constituted do not. It is true that a wide scope would still be left to partisan intrigue and corruption, but nevertheless some evil influences would be excluded. It is true that such conventions, however constituted, must still be greatly influenced by party managers; but the good character of the conventions would resist the lowest and basest sort of influence, and invite the highest, and thus tend to raise the tone of party politics to a higher level. Voters conscious of their inability to inquire into the merits of candidates, if the choice were confided to a body of men expressly selected for the duty and competent to perform it, could vote without misgiving or disgust for the party whose principles they approved. And honorable and cultivated men, ambitious of a public career, could present themselves without loss of self-respect to a legal and intelligent tribunal able to appreciate and willing fairly to consider their claims.

The plan we have ventured to suggest is, of course, a mere outline. Should it, or one like it, ever come to be applied in practice, many matters of detail must be added. If the principles on which it is founded be correct, these could easily be furnished by persons versed in the working of party politics.

Perhaps by some such scheme as this, aided by the plans for voting so as to secure representation to minorities already referred to, the intelligence of our people may be able to disarm universal suffrage of its admitted evils and risks, and at the same time preserve whatever of good it possesses. This is its

tendency to increase the self-respect of the lower classes, and to educate them by active participation in public affairs; to prevent the odious and invidious distinctions which create and imbitter the animosities of caste; and to diminish the temptation to disaffection, tumult, and disorder.

We have said above that the ignorant many, when possessed of political power, must choose from the enlightened few the persons to intrust with its administration, or must lose their power. It is very easy for such a government to be thus destroyed, for power will not long remain in the hands of ignorance, and the enlightened, with or without votes, are natural rulers. The object of the plan we have ventured to suggest is to secure obedience to this principle by law.

SIDNEY G. FISHER.

ART. IX. GOVERNOR ANDREW.

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JOHN ALBION ANDREW, late Governor of Massachusetts, was born May 31, 1818, at Windham, a small town near Lake Sebago, about fifteen miles from Portland, -two years before the separation of Maine from Massachusetts. The family was English in origin, descending in America from Robert Andrew, who immigrated to Rowley Village, now Boxford, in Essex County, Mass., and died there in 1668. It was connected by marriage with several of the famous ancient families of the Colony,-a grandmother of the Governor being a granddaughter of the brave Captain William Pickering, who commanded the Province Galley in 1707, to protect the fisheries against the French and Indians, and the mother of her husband being Mary Higginson, a direct descendant from Francis Higginson, the organizer of the first church in the Colony. A portrait of this old clergyman, his ancestor, depicted with snow-white hair and gray mustache, clad in a black robe, holding a book in one hand, on the index finger of which a large signet-ring is displayed, hung over the mantel

on the chimney of the Council-Chamber during the whole of the Governor's administration. The grandfather of the Governor, whose name he bore, was a silversmith, and afterwards a successful merchant in the old and wealthy city of Salem. He removed to Windham and died there in 1791. His son Jonathan was born in Salem and lived there until manhood, when he, too, went to Windham, and married Nancy G. Pierce, a teacher in the Fryeburg Academy, where Daniel Webster also was once a teacher. In after years they removed to Boxford, where they died.

The Governor was their oldest son. He was a school-boy at Windham and at Salem, and then a student in Bowdoin College. Of his college life Mr. Chandler spoke as follows in his felicitous eulogy at the bar meeting, held on November 4, after the Governor's death:

"He took no rank as a scholar, and seemed to have not the slightest ambition for academical distinction; he had no part at Commencement. This rosy, chub-faced boy, genial, affectionate, and popular, gave no indications of future renown, nor of that ability, energy, and breadth of view for which he is now so celebrated. He was not regarded as dull, very much the contrary; but he seemed to be indifferent to the ordinary routine of college honors, possessed of that happy temperament which enabled him then and for many years afterwards to pass quietly along without a touch of the carking cares and temptations that wait on the ambitious aspirations of the young as well as the old."

Immediately after graduating at college he came to Boston to study law, and prepared for the profession in the office of Henry H. Fuller, an uncle of Margaret Fuller. Then followed twenty years of steady practice at the Suffolk bar. It was not a conspicuous career, but in it his biographer will find the marks of all the great qualities he afterwards displayed in office, for never was a life more consistent. In the latter years of his practice before becoming Governor, he was engaged in a remarkable succession of cases involving high questions of constitutional law. In 1854 he defended the parties indicted at Boston for rescuing the fugitive slave Burns; in 1855 he defended the British Consul at Boston against the charge of violating our neutrality laws during the Crimean war; in 1856 he argued the petition for a writ of habeas corpus to test the

legality of the imprisonment of the free State officers of Kansas at Topeka. More lately, in 1859, he initiated and directed the measures for the legal defence of John Brown in Virginia; and in 1860 he was of counsel for F. B. Sanborn, at his discharge by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts from the custody of the United States Marshal, by whom he had been arrested on a warrant from the Vice-President of the United States to compel his appearance before the Congressional Committee of Investigation into the affair at Harper's Ferry. He had himself appeared before that committee as a witness the same year. On his theory of duty as a lawyer, he never hesitated to defend unpopular and even odious causes. In illustration, besides his defence of the British Consul, may be named his advocacy of Burnham, in 1860, against the inquisition of the Massachusetts Legislature, and also his defence in the United States courts, the same year, of the notorious slaveryacht Wanderer against forfeiture. In questions of domestic relation, perhaps no member of our bar had a more extensive practice, or had made deeper study of the law. His mind thus was busy always with the higher problems of philosophic jurisprudence, and his course of practice had led him to comprehend thoroughly the mutual relations of the government and the people in all questions of personal liberty, so that when, in mature life, he was called to be Governor, he was already a well-trained political philosopher.

Whether he would be as efficient in practice as he had been studious of theory was unknown. Never but once before had he held political office, and then only for one session as a member of the lower house of the Legislature, although, to be sure, he became at once the leader of that house. The condition of his private fortune had debarred him from the practical political training which in this country almost always precedes elevation to the highest offices, and had required his uninterrupted devotion to a profession which always demands constancy as a condition of success. But, in 1860, he was suddenly chosen Governor by a popular vote larger than that received by any of his predecessors.

There was a furious snow-storm on January 5, 1861, the day of his inauguration. Without waiting for it to abate, his first offi