ls of this favored country, Heaven be thanked, are infrequently
slandered: they are, as a rule, so bad that calumniation is a
compliment. Our best men, with here and there an exception, have
been driven out of public life, or made afraid to enter it. Even
our spasmodic efforts at reform fail ludicrously for lack of leaders
unaffiliated with "the thing to be reformed." Unless attracted by the
salary, why should a gentleman "aspire" to the Presidency of the United
States? During his canvass (and he is expected to "run," not merely to
"stand") he will have from his own party a support that should make him
blush, and from all the others an opposition that will stick at nothing
to accomplish his satisfactory defamation. After his election his
partition and allotment of the loaves and fishes will estrange an
important and thenceforth implacable faction of his following without
appeasing the animosity of any one else; and during his entire service
his sky will be dark with a flight of dead cats. At the finish of his
term the utmost that he can expect in the way of reward not expressible
in terms of the national currency is that not much more than one-half of
his countrymen will believe him a scoundrel to the end of their days.

V.

The kind of government that we have seems to me one of the worst kinds
extant A government that does not protect life is a flat failure, no
matter what else it may do. Life being almost universally regarded as
the most precious possession, its security is the first and highest
essential--not the life of him who takes life, but the life which is
exposed defenceless to his hateful hand. In no country in the world,
civilized or savage, is life so insecure as in this. In no country in
the world is murder held in so light reprobation. In no battle of modern
times have so many lives been taken as are lost annually in the United
States through public indifference to the crime of homicide--through
disregard of law, through bad government. If American self-government,
with its ten thousand homicides a year, is good government, there is no
such thing as bad. Self-government! What monstrous nonsense! Who governs
himself needs no government, has no governor, is not governed. If
government has any meaning it means the restraint of the many by the
few--the subordination of numbers to brains. It means the determined
denial to the masses of the right to cut their own throats. It means
the grasp and control o