tions are based; then apparently
that confusion and ruin may follow, an act of Congress may be passed
to-morrow changing the whole thing by demonetizing one or remonetizing
the other; and the government finally opens a junk-shop, and is
engaged actively in the "second-hand" trade, or is in sharp
competition with the rag-picker. And our great political educators
fall to wrangling about a proposition, that could be paralleled only
by some phenomenal crank beating up recruits for a new party upon a
platform that all yard-sticks must be made of hickory wood, and he
shall be deemed a counterfeiter who dares to use any other, and the
length of the yard-stick must be flexible so that "a yard shall
always contain a yard's worth of cloth." The children open a play
store, and there the legal tender for all goods is pins, where the
size of the pin or the exact composition it is made of are never
considered. There is, to my mind, no question but the children should
teach our great statesmen some of the fundamentals of common sense.
These are specimens of the economic problems evolved from our hundred
years of voting experiment--the ripened fruit of self-government.
Books and papers are filled with discussions of whether both gold and
silver should be legal tender for debts or only gold. And the rank
sophistries that mark the flood-tide of a campaign discussion either
of this or the problem of taxation are surely to be considered among
the curiosities of our civilization. Just why men should range
themselves on respective party lines on these questions and shut their
eyes to evils that are eating their way to the heart of government and
that unchecked must end in common ruin, passes comprehension.

The organization of a powerful party machinery with the authority to
discipline recalcitrant or discordant members is a natural outgrowth
of our universal voting. The active politicians and place hunters will
control the machine, and when office, and place are made glittering
prizes, then comes the inevitable scramble, the selfishness, trampling
the weak by the strong, corruption, chicanery, the unspeakable crimes,
and finally the Pandora's box is opened, and the swarming evils darken
the heavens. Inferior men with greatest cunning and least scruples
soon push their way to the front; all sight of good government is
eventually lost, the Washingtons and Jeffersons in time disappear with
a constantly increasing ratio from public life, and th