thus truly fulfilling the great office of a _statesman_.

The one great trouble with our country to-day is that we have but few
statesmen. We have a great swarm, a great hoard of politicians; but it
is only now and then that we find a man who is large enough truly to
deserve the name--statesman. The large majority in public life to-day
are there not for the purpose of serving the best interests of those
whom they are supposed to represent, but they are there purely for self,
purely for self-aggrandizement in this form or in that, as the case may
be.

Especially do we find this true in our municipalities. In some, the
government instead of being in the hands of those who would make it such
in truth, those who would make it serve the interests it is designed to
serve, it is in the hands of those who are there purely for self, little
whelps, those who will resort to any means to secure their ends, at
times even to honorable means, should they seem to serve best the
particular purpose in hand. We have but to look around us to see that
this is true. The miserable, filthy, and deplorable condition of affairs
the Lexow Committee in its investigations not so long ago laid bare to
public gaze had its root in what? In the fact that the offices in that
great municipality have been and are filled by men who are there to
serve in the highest degree the public welfare or by men who are there
purely for self-aggrandizement? But let us pass on. This degraded
condition of affairs exists not only in this great city, but there are
scarcely any that are free from it entirely. Matters are not always to
continue thus, however. The American people will learn by and by what
they ought fully to realize to-day--that the moment the honest people,
the citizens, in distinction from the barnacles, mass themselves and
stay massed, the notorious, filthy political rings cannot stand before