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 hear of a more cynical confession? And the man who made this confession has for many years been the almost omnipotent leader of the Republican party in the State of New York, who ruled the Legislature according to his political interests, whose favor or disfavor made Republican politic i ans rise or fall, and who controlled the most important part of the Federal appointments in that State, even under the present administration. He is said to be now succumbing to a new State-boss stronger than he.

We must at least thank him for having furnished us a most instructive object-lesson as to the effect the spoils system, the patronage-trade, is apt to exercise upon the leadership and the moral spirit of political parties—for the Hon. Thomas C. Platt is by no means the only potentate of his kind. There are others in other States fully as powerful and fully as vicious. There will be such in every State if the demoralizing influences which are bred and stimulated, among other causes, by the spoils system, are much longer permitted to corrupt and degrade political parties. The general, or even as extensive, use of the public offices and employments as party spoil cannot fail to make our party-contests, which should be only struggles for the prevalence of different principles and policies, in great - measure scrambles for public plunder; it is almost certain in the long run to make the most selfish and unscrupulous element in the party organization, which is usually the most alert and active, the most influential one, and then that leader of the party who succeeds in becoming the general distributor of the spoil, will, as paymaster, easily develop into the boss with a well-organized machine of spoils-fed henchmen behind him. The party leader will then be, not what he should be, a leader of opinion, but a mere captain of organization; the organization will be held together by what is picturesquely called “the cohesive power of public plunder,” and it will be controlled by the ever alert element of the habitual spoils hunters. This means the utter demoralization of party activity, making the party unfit to be an agency of good democratic government—in fact, making it a danger to democratic institutions.