tructions and determining their nature
and origin. According to their report, the difficulty lies not in any
general unsoundness of the works, but in the failure to detect and stop
a side issue from certain foul subterranean regions, the discharge from
which becomes copious and offensive in proportion as the regular flood
is feeble and low. In plainer words, we are told that the mode in which
places in the public service are filled and held has made the active
pursuit of politics a mere trade, attracting the basest cupidities,
conducted by the most shameless methods, and putting the control of
public affairs, directly or indirectly, into impure and incompetent
hands. This view has been so fully elaborated, and the facts that
confirm it are so abundant and notorious, that further argument is
unnecessary. It is equally clear that the state of things thus briefly
described has no necessary connection with democratic institutions. The
spread of democracy in Europe has been attended by a gradual
purification in the political atmosphere. The system of "patronage" had
its origin in oligarchy, and wherever it is found oligarchy must exist
in reality if not in name. Instead of being an inherent part of our
institutions, it is as much an excrescence, an abnormal feature, as
slavery was; but, unlike that, it might be removed with perfect safety
and by the simplest kind of operation.

Here, then, is a question worthy to come before the nation as an issue
of the first magnitude. Here is a thing affecting the interests of the
whole country which some men are anxious to preserve and which others
are eager to reform. It remains only to consider how it can best be
brought before the nation.

We shall perhaps be told that it is already before the nation; that the
account we have given of the nature of the approaching contest is
incorrect or incomplete; that on the skirts of the two parties is a body
of "Independents," carrying the banner of Reform and strong enough to
decide the contest and give the victory to whichever party will adopt
that standard as its own.

Now, we have to remark that the tactics thus proposed have been tried
twice before. Eight years ago the Reformers allied themselves with the
Democratic party, which accepted their leader--chosen, apparently,
because he was neither a Reformer nor a Democrat--and the result was not
only defeat, but disgrace, with disarray along the whole of the combined
line. Four years ago the