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62 and a few striking individual exceptions apart, are those composing the Senate of the United States conspicuous in these respects? They certainly do not so impress the casual observer. That, as a body, they increasingly fail to command confidence and attention is matter of common remark. Nor is the reason far to seek. It would be the same as respects literature, science and art, were their representatives chosen and results reached through a count of noses localized, with selection severely confined to home talent.

I am well aware of the criticism which will at once be passed on what I now advance. Local representation through choice by numerical majorities within given confines, geographically and mathematically fixed, is a system so rooted and intrenched in the convictions and traditions of the American community that even to question its wisdom evinces a lack of political common-sense. It in fact resembles nothing so much as the attempt to whistle down a strongly prevailing October wind from the West. The attempt so to do is not practical politics! In reply, however, I would suggest that such a criticism is wholly irrelevant. The publicist has nothing to do with practical politics. It is as if it were objected to a physician who prescribed sanitation against epidemics that the community in question was by custom and tradition wedded to filth and surface-drainage, and could not possibly be induced to abandon them in favor of any new-fangled theories of soap-and-water