Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/36

30 The readiest to come forward are not the best men, but those who most desire the prize; and the selection is practically made by a party machinery which is apt to preclude all freedom of choice, and to force upon the electors the most violent partisan. Washington, itself a mere political and official city, removed from all the tempering influences of general society, seems the inevitable scene of cabal and corruption. I do not shut my eyes to these things. But it must be remembered that the action of the central government is in ordinary times very limited, and that the evils connected with it by no means sink deep into American life.

Again, I do not shut my eyes to the evils of universal suffrage, when extended not only to the educated and prosperous American, owning property or receiving high wages, and fully competent to exercise all the powers of a citizen, but to the ignorant and penniless emigrant, Irish or German. This is a mischief which has arisen from the desire in each state to create a large number of voters, that it may be largely represented in the central government. Possibly the increased firmness of tone which has been produced in American politics by this struggle, and the evidence which the Irish have given of their political character, may lead to some salutary measure for the preservation of the franchise from abuse, and for preventing these wanderers, while still in their uncivilised state, from destroying with their own hands the blessings which, when civilised, they are destined to enjoy. Meantime it is a fallacy, derived from the too exclusive study of New York correspondents of our newspapers, to suppose that the Irish mob of the great cities governs America. It might almost as well be said that the Irish