nd recklessness
manifested in our great cities, deceived by exaggerated
representations of the misgovernment of the Southern States by a
race just emerging from slavery, disgusted by the extent to which
great numbers of our fellow-citizens have gone astray in the
metaphysical subtleties of financial discussion, have uttered
their eloquent warnings of the danger of the failure of universal
suffrage. Such utterances from such sources have been frequent.
They were never more abundant than in the early part of the
present century. They are, when made in a serious and patriotic
spirit, to be received with the gratitude due to that greatest of
public benefactors--he who points out to the people their dangers
and their faults.

But popular suffrage is to be tried not by comparison with ideal
standards of excellence, but by comparison with other forms of
government. We are willing to submit our century of it to this
test. The crimes that have stained our history have come chiefly
from its denial, not from its establishment. The misgovernment
and corruption of our great cities have been largely due to men
whose birth and training have been under other systems. The
abuses attributed by political hostility to negro governments at
the South--governments from which the intelligence and education
of the State held themselves sulkily aloof--do not equal those
which existed under the English or French aristocracy within the
memory of living men. There have been crimes, blunders,
corruptions, follies in the history of our republic. Aristides
has been banished from public employment, while Cleon has been
followed by admiring throngs. But few of these things have been
due to the extension of the suffrage. Strike out of our history
the crimes of slavery, strike out the crimes, unparalleled for
ferocity and brutality, committed by an oligarchy in its attempt
to overthrow universal suffrage, and we may safely challenge for
our national and State governments comparison with monarchy or
aristocracy in their best and purest periods.

Either the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence and the
bills of rights are true, or government must rest on no principle
of right whatever, but its powers may be lawfully taken by force
and held by force by any person or c