Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/660

640 and serious troubles of any kind should at the same time arise; it would be very far from impossible, if, in addition to the foreign element, female suffrage should be introduced. Nothing is really needed, at least in ordinary times, but a titular President of the Executive Council to represent the commonwealth on occasions of state. In the civil war Lincoln was, perhaps, useful as a chief, holding by tacit consent a sort of dictatorship during the season of peril; but institutions are not made for civil war, and a provision might easily be framed enabling the Legislature in case of great public peril to confer on the executive council increased authority for a limited time, somewhat after the fashion of the Roman dictatorship, which worked well enough during the healthy period of the republic.

Now comes a momentous question. Ought the election to the central Legislature by the people to be direct or indirect; in other words, ought the members of the central Legislature to be elected by the constituencies at large, as they are now in England and other countries under parliamentary government, or by the members of local assemblies elected in their turn by the people? The writer of this paper is a hearty democrat, and profoundly convinced that the people, with all their passions and defects, will on the whole vote right whenever they see their way. He is persuaded that the great obstacle to voting right, as well as to doing other things that are right, is selfishness, and that this prevails fully as much among the rich as among the poor; indeed, among the rich it is almost erected into a principle, under the pretext of defending the rights of property, as though the rights of the destitute did not require much more to be defended. He is not actuated, therefore, by any conservative prejudice in saying that to him the system of having a central Legislature elected directly by the constituencies at large seems to have decisively failed. There are two points in the process of election, the nomination and the voting. The second point only has engaged the serious attention of statesmen, whose minds have been occupied entirely with problems as to the qualifications for the franchise, the distribution of seats, and the question of the ballot. It is in the first part of the process that direct election has broken down. The people, if left to themselves, will choose rightly between two candidates; but who is to choose the candidates? The people at large can not select from any extensive area; a common man does not see over a hill, much less can he perform the task which Mr. Hare's plan would set him, of picking out the persons of greatest eminence from the whole nation a process which would infallibly degenerate into a vast party ticket. On the other hand, the worthiest are not very likely to nominate themselves, though the least worthy are. The practical result is that the nominations are everywhere usurped by party organizations and their proprietors, by caucuses and wire-pullers, whose fell ascendency, complete in the United States and Canada, is being very rapidly extended in this country.