ditions which they represent or are
figured as representing, and shall be assured that certain shibboleths
and watchwords should be the objects of our veneration and certain
others of our abhorrence, and that on our choice between them will
depend the ruin or salvation of the country. But we shall be no wiser
then than we are now in regard to any one measure or set of measures
affecting the welfare of the nation, and tending either to preserve or
to reform, which one party proposes to carry out and the other to
reject. The proclamations of each will be full of promises and
disavowals, but these, it is very certain, will not touch a single
principle of the least importance which will be disputed by the other.
Each party will parade its "record," its glorious achievements in the
past, when it carried the country triumphantly through dangers in which
the other party had involved it; but on neither side will any
distinctive line of policy be enunciated, for the simple reason that on
neither side has any distinctive line of policy been conceived or even
thought of. Finally, it is not at all certain that the battle will be
decided by the usual and regular methods of political warfare--that "the
will of the majority" will be allowed to express itself or suffered to
prevail--that fraudulent devices or actual violence may not ultimately
determine the result.

The inquiry naturally suggests itself how this state of things has been
brought about--above all, whether it is, as many intelligent persons
seem to suspect, an unavoidable outgrowth of democratic institutions.
This, indeed, is a question important not only to us, but to all the
civilized nations of the world, for there is nothing more certain in
regard to the present tendencies of civilization than that they are
setting rapidly and irresistibly toward the general adoption of
democratic forms of government. The oldest and greatest of the European
nations, after trying almost every conceivable system, has returned, not
so much from a deliberate preference as from the breakdown of every
other, to that which had twice before failed as an experiment, but which
now gives fair promise of successful and permanent operation--a republic
based on universal suffrage. In many other countries what is virtually
the same system in a somewhat different form seems to be firmly
established, and in these the ever-potent example of France may be
expected at some more or less remote conjuncture