CHAPTER IV.

AMERICAN POLITICS-AMERICAN AND ENGLISH SOCIAL
SYSTEMS CONTRASTED-POLITICAL QUESTIONS.

THE Curse of the country seems to be Poli-
tics-the perpetual electioneering and voting
that are always going on, and the low tone
of politics and political morality generally.
Perhaps I saw the very worst of it, as the
time of my visit was that of the Presidential
election but more or less of the same kind
of thing must be generally going on, owing
to the short tenure of the various offices.
The President, as I have said, is elected.
every four years, the
every six years, the
tives every two years. The Legislatures of

Senators of Congress
House of Representa-

the several States have different rules, but generally the members of the Lower House are chosen annually. Then there are the States' Governors, the Mayors and Aldermen of the towns, the States' Attorneys-General,

Coroners, Auditors, Presidential Electors and a host of other functionaries, including even the District Judges, who are all changed or liable to be changed so frequently, that the country is kept in a perpetual turmoil and excitement. Not only are all these offices paid, but there are thousands of placemen who are, as a matter of course, removed if the opposition party comes into power, and that too just as they have begun to learn their work, while the struggle for an office of any kind under Government is as keen as in France. Moreover, it is so generally as serted, that the assertion may be assumed to have considerable truth in it, that most public men, to use a vulgar expression, 'feather their nests pretty comfortably during their tenure of office, and that public corruption is the rule and not the exception. The tone of the Press on this point is perfectly amazing to an Englishman; the most scandalous charges are every day coolly made against the politicians of the opposite side, which, if only a tenth part were true, would render such men infamous in England. No doubt there is but little truth in them, but the effect of such language must be to lower the whole tone of politics throughout the

country, and no one who has travelled in the States can deny that the tone is very low indeed.

One effect of this has been to degrade the business of politics to such a level in the public estimation that the best and highest classes of the country keep altogether aloof from it, and it is given over entirely to secondrate men and the lower classes generally; the leading politicians are as a rule successful journalists or sharp lawyers. The race of statesmen does not exist, and as is well known, in late years at any rate, none of the really great men of America have ever been chosen as President.

It is not too much to say that the controversy on the Alabama question is a proof of this. Our negotiators were statesmen and gentlemen; those on the other side were politicians, who thought that the art of statesmanship consisted in chicanery, and that a question of national law between two great countries was to be determined on the same principles as a petty case in some inferior law court. I have more than once heard the remark made by Canadians that so long as England continues to send such men as she usually sends to negotiate treaties

with America, she is certain to be overreached in every transaction, and that if Canadians had been employed who understood the nature of the American politician, the Alabama and San Juan questions would have terminated very differently.

For the state of things that I have been describing, Universal Suffrage has been largely to blame. The swarms of uneducated Irishmen and others, and now the newlyenfranchised negroes, simply swamp the respectable voters who have a real stake in the maintenance of order and good government, fall into the hands of designing and unscrupulous politicians, and are, it is generally understood, bought wholesale; while it is constantly asserted that thousands of them are transferred from one State to another on purpose to vote, and often vote many times over. I conversed on the subject with many Americans, and I never met one who did not condemn Universal Suffrage, and I never found one Canadian who did not thank his stars that they were not cursed with it. If I am rightly informed, the same evils are showing themselves in the Australian legislatures. They are due to the same cause, and I fear the States have not seen the worst of them.

E

The consequence of the highest classes keeping aloof from politics is that the Press does not address itself to them: hence the very men most fitted to give the Press a proper tone have no connection with it, and it naturally panders to the passions and prejudices of its supporters. When such journals contain bitter attacks on England, as they often do, you are generally told by respectable Americans that such articles do not really represent the American sentiment; but the answer naturally is, that although that may be true so far as regards the respectable minority, that class as a rule does not influence the politics of the country, and that the papers are not likely to write what would be displeasing to the great majority of their subscribers, who unfortunately do influence politics very materially. It is these violent and ignorant men who may any day plunge the two countries into war, which none would regret more than the respectable Americans themselves, though unhappily it would then be too late.

It is a curious fact that Anglo-Indians, on returning home, are as a rule decidedly radical in their political tendencies, perhaps from a species of re-action after living so long