writer of memoirs: so, on this head, I do not now propose to dilate or
bear witness. I will only briefly say that having at one period, and for
more than the lifetime of a generation, been in charge of large
corporate and financial interests, I have had much occasion to deal with
legislative bodies, National, State and Municipal. That page of my
experiences is the one I care least to recall, and would most gladly
forget. I am not going to specify, or give names of either localities or
persons; but, knowing what I know, it is useless to approach me on this
topic with the usual good-natured and optimistic, if somewhat unctuous
and conventional, commonplaces on general uprightness and the tendency
to improved conditions and a higher standard. I know better! I have seen
legislators bought like bullocks--they selling themselves. I have
watched them cover their tracks with a cunning more than vulpine. I have
myself been black-mailed and sandbagged, while whole legislative bodies
watched the process, fully cognizant at every step of what was going on.
This, I am glad to say, was years ago. The legislative conditions were
then bad, scandalously bad; nor have I any reason to believe in a
regeneration since. The stream will never rise higher than its source;
but it generally indicates the level thereof. In this case, I can only
hope that in my experience it failed so to do. Running at a low level,
the waters of that stream were deplorably dirty.

That the legislative branch of our government has fallen so markedly in
public estimation is not, I think, open to denial. To my mind, under the
conditions I have referred to, such could not fail to be the case. It
has, consequently, lost public confidence. Hence this popular demand for
immediate legislation by the People,--this twentieth-century appeal to
the Agora and Forum methods which antedate the era of Christ. It is true
the world outgrew them two thousand years ago, and they were discarded;
but, living in a progressive and not a reactionary period, all that, we