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universal suffrage for college suffrage, or corporation suffrage, or
newspaper suffrage?

Our danger to-day does not lie in universal suffrage. It lies in the
steady encroachments of wealth, in the multiplication of monopolies,
in the too rapid growth of fungus millionnaires, in the increasing
number of well educated idlers, in the sinister prominence of the
saloon in politics, in the tendency of the country to submit to
bureaucracy, in the transformation of the national Senate into a club
of rich men, housed and fed at the national expense, in the change of
the House of Representatives into a huddle of clerks to register the
decrees of greedy capital, in the chronic distrust of the people felt
among book-educated and professional men; in one word, in the
appalling gravitation towards government by "boodle" in the hands of
unscrupulous minorities.

The only hope of deliverance lies in the people,--in their honesty,
fair play, and decision, No; it is not universal suffrage that has
brought disgrace on the country. If the rancor of party spirit, if the
dry-rot of legislative corruption, if the tyranny of incorporated
wealth, if the diabolism of intemperance are to be curbed, it is
universal suffrage which must hold the reins. Talk of taking the
ballot out of the hand of the poor citizen! As well fling the revolver
out of window when the burglar is in the house. One of the keenest
critics of American life has said: "Corruption does not so much rot
the masses; it poisons Congress. Credit mobilier and money rings are
not housed under thatched roofs; they flaunt at the capital." The real
scum is the so-called better class. If anybody is to be deprived of a
vote, it should be the railroad king, the mill owner, the indifferent
trader, and the Europeanized Yankee who spends abroad what his father
earned at home, and mistakes Paris for Paradise.

As another illustration of the un-republican trend, observe the
obsequious attitude of our government towards monarchs and monarchies.
We are to-day cheek by jowl with the despots of Europe. Instead of
being the torch bearer of freedom we occupy a position of apology for
what we are and of gaping admiration for what they are. When an
opportunity offered the other day to recognize the new Republic of
Brazil, the toadies at Washington equivocated and postponed. One would
suppose that the disappearance of the last monarchy from the new world
would have been greeted in the great Republ