have got the only republic worth the name. You choose to run your ship
of state with a gilt figurehead; but I know, and so does every man who
has thought about it, that your Queen doesn't cost you one-half what our
system of pure democracy costs us. Politics in America? There aren't
any. The whole question of the day is spoils. That's all. We fight our
souls out over tram-contracts, gas-contracts, road-contracts, and any
darned thing that will turn a dishonest dollar, and we call that
politics. No one but a low-down man will run for Congress and the
Senate--the Senate of the freest people on earth are bound slaves to
some blessed monopoly. If I had money enough, I could buy the Senate of
the United States, the Eagle, and the Star-Spangled Banner complete."

"And the Irish vote included?" said some one--a Britisher, I fancy.

"Certainly, if I chose to go yahooing down the street at the tail of the
British lion. Anything dirty will buy the Irish vote. That's why our
politics are dirty. Some day you Britishers will grant Home Rule to the
vermin in our blankets. Then the real Americans will invite the Irish to
get up and git to where they came from. 'Wish you'd hurry up that time
before we have another trouble. We're bound hand and foot by the Irish
vote; or at least that's the excuse for any unusual theft that we
perpetrate. I tell you there's no good in an Irishman except as a
fighter. He doesn't understand work. He has a natural gift of the gab,
and he can drink a man blind. These three qualifications make him a
first-class politician."

With one accord the Americans present commenced to abuse Ireland and its
people as they had met them, and each man prefaced his commination
service with: "I am an American by birth--an American from way back."

It must be an awful thing to live in a country where you have to explain
that you really belong there. Louder grew the clamour and crisper the
sentiments.

"If we weren't among Americans, I should say we were consorting with
Russians," said a fellow-countryman in my ear.

"They can't mean what they say," I whispered. "Listen to this fellow."
He was saying:

"And I know, for I have been three times round the world and resided in
most countries on the Continent, that there was never people yet could
govern themselves."

"Allah! This from an American!"

"And who should know better than an American?" was the retort. "For the
ignorant--that is to say for the majority--there