are assured, is changed! The heart is no longer on the right-hand side
of the body. To secure desired results it is only necessary to start
quite fresh, as a mere preliminary discarding all lessons of experience.

Such reasoning does not commend itself to my judgment. On the contrary,
the failure of the American legislative to command an increasing public
confidence, while both natural and obvious, is, if my observation guides
me to conclusions in any degree correct, traceable to two reasons. So
far as government is concerned, the law-making branch is assumed to be
made up of the wisest and the most expert. Meanwhile, it is as a matter
of fact chosen by the process I have not over-respectfully referred to
as the counting of noses; and, moreover, by an unwritten law more
binding than any in the Statute Book, that counting of noses is with us
localized. In other words, when it comes to the choice of our
law-makers, reducing provincialism to a system we make the local
numerical majority supreme, and any one is considered competent to
legislate. He can do that, even if by common knowledge he is incompetent
or untrustworthy in every other capacity. Localization thus becomes the
stronghold of mediocrity, the sure avenue to office of the second-and
third-rate man,--he who wishes always to enjoy his share of a little
brief authority, to have, he also, a taste of public life. In this
respect our American system is, I submit, manifestly and incomparably
inferior to the system of parliamentary election existing in Great
Britain, itself open to grave criticism. In Great Britain the public man
seeks the constituency wherever he can find it; or the constituency
seeks its representative wherever it recognizes him. The present Prime
Minister of Great Britain, for instance, represents a small Scotch
constituency in which he never resided, but by which he was elected more
than twenty years ago, and through which he has since consecutively
remained in public life. On the other hand, look at the waste and