Page:Meda - a tale of the future.djvu/132

128 country that the mere mention of the name of congressman, a senator, or even of president, was sufficient to brand its bearer as being a man that could not be trusted. I have not the time to explain all that took place in America, but it was practically a counterpart of our experiences in England, only much more intense. The result was the same as with the English. The intelligent part of the people revolting came to the rescue of the nation, and manfully did their painful duty. They, like our fathers, saw that Republicanism was a sham. They saw that while they had not a king to rule them, they had a man in power who, owing to the degraded state of the political world, was now invariably an all-powerful, ambitious, uneducated and unprincipled being that no one could respect, and who was supported and kept in office by men as bad as himself. With what feelings of regret did the American people of that terrible time look back and pray for the return of the political purity that existed in the days of Washington, or even in the days