Page:The crater; or, Vulcan's peak.djvu/450

 210 THE CRATER; necessary to regulate it by legerdemain. No good repub lican ever disputes the principle, while no sagacious one ever submits to it. There are various modes, however, of defeating all sacred principles, and this particular sacred principle among the rest. The simplest is that of caucus nominations. The process is a singular illustration of the theory of a majority-government. Primary meetings are called, at which no one is ever present, but the wire-pullers and their puppets. Here very fierce conflicts occur be tween the wire-pullers themselves, and these are frequently decided by votes as close as majorities of one, or two. Making the whole calculation, it follows that nominations are usually made by about a tenth, or even a twentieth of the body of the electors ; and this, too, on the supposition that they who vote actually have opinions of their own, as usually they have not, merely wagging their tongues as the wires are pulled. Now, these nominations are conclusive, when made by the ruling party, since there are no con certed means of opposing them. A man must have a fla grantly bad character not to succeed under a regular nomi nation, or he must be too honest for the body of the electors ; one fault being quite as likely to defeat him as the other. In this way was a great revolution effected in the colony of the crater. At one time, the governor thought of knock ing the whole thing in the head, by the strong arm ; as he might have done, and would have been perfectly justified in doing. The Kannakaswere now at his command, and, in truth, a majority of the electors were with him; but political jugglery held them in duress. A majority of the electors of the state of New York are, at this moment, op posed to universal suffrage, especially as it is exercised in the town and village governments, but moral cowardice rmlds them in subjection. Afraid of their own shadows, each politician hesitates to bell the cat. What is more, the select aristocrats and monarchists are the least bold in acting frankly, and in saying openly what they think ; leaving that office to be discharged, as it ever will be, by the men who true democrats, and not canting democrats willing to give the people just as much control as they know how to use, or which circumstances will allow them to use beneficially to themselves, do not hesitate to speak