"These contests for the presidency have done more to lower the standard of public morals than all other causes combined. I say nothing now of the drunkenness and gambling and idleness they produce. They have not only ruined many of us as men, they have ruined all of us as citizens. The American voter not only shamelessly avows the sale of his vote, men well received in society not only shamelessly avow the buying of votes, but men the very first among us in intelligence, property, and character openly engage in this bribery, men, too, who are no seekers of office, want no office, are almost above office, and who are thus stimulated to defiling the institutions of their country by no other motive than that of party spirit. The natural result is obvious. Where votes can be fraudulently cast, they can be fraudulently counted. Every intelligent observer of the times sees, or fancies that he sees, the no distant day when all our elections will be settled by the purse. How much longer, how much sooner, it will be before they are settled by a not more corrupt but a sterner arbitrament, rests in the ken of providence alone."

(III.) Any irregularity in the election of any elector, concerning directly, as it would, only the people of one State, could be corrected without danger of national disturbance.

As to the fact, we presume it will be readily conceded.1 As to the means, the Senate, the House, or the college itself, might be judge of the election of individual electors. The objections applying to either plan are obvious and (comparatively) unimportant.

(IV.) No president will have a party following of more than a small minority of the whole people, probably not more than the people of his own State.

This is probably the strongest argument that can be offered for this plan.

Why was there danger apprehended from the election of 1861 ? Was it not because each aspirant for the presidency was followed by a large part of the nation blinded by party excitement? Why did we apprehend trouble after the late election? Should we have done so if Mr. Tilden and Mr. Hayes had been voted for, not for the presidency, but for an electoral college, by a district containing not more than a million of people?

But this is the smaller side of the proposition. Great as is the necessity for reducing the party of a candidate for the presidency, there is a far greater necessity for reducing the party of a president. It is not the exciting party contest, but the insidious after

1 If not, see ante, p. 418.

results of it, that have done most injury. Every president is a political debtor to a hundred thousand hard, hungry creditors, his supporters. They have given him an advancement; and he must pay for it. He does pay for it. We pay for it. Seriously, what must become of a government whose every office-holder is dependent for his place upon the continuance of a party in power? The facts are known. The question is the argument. Is it not desirable, then, is it not a vital necessity, that this condition of affairs should be changed? The Nicholas plan does make the change. Under it, no president is elected as a party leader. He will not have to pay party followers. He will not have to turn good men out of office whether he will or no, simply because they voted for another man. No office-holder will feel that his term must expire with that of the president who appointed him. In short," civil-service reform" will be accomplished without the inconvenience of aged incompetency.

Under this head there is one objection to the plan which is valid. The president, although not elected as a national party leader, will still be the chosen chief of a more limited party,the party of his own State. Will he not reward it too liberally? Probably. It is only natural that he should do so. It is true that his appointments must receive the approval of a national senate, which is no longer his subservient tool, and whose interests are opposed to his partiality; but still that partiality would probably exist. No longer a party president, his appointments would be more freely condemned by public opinion than they are now; but, though the check would be effective, it would not be complete.

(V.) There will probably be no irregularity or fraud in the proceedings of the electoral college.

The difficulties in the way of combination have been already sufficiently alluded to. It remains merely to suggest the character of the men who will compose this body. The honor of being a member of it, and the hope of securing the presidency through it, will always make it the goal of honest ambition. The uncertainty of election will effectually exclude the expensive candidacy of the calculating politician. It will certainly be a most respectable body as compared with any we now have. Is it likely that there will be fraud in it?

Probably there has never been a time in our history when,

if all the State governors, or all the United States senators or representatives, or all the speakers of State legislatures, were met together under this amendment to elect one of their own number to be president, they would not have done so fairly. Yet many of them have not been honest men. But, composed in the the most part, as this body would be, of men honest, capable, and with averse interests; placed, as it would be, before an interested but not an excited public, - fraud in its proceedings would hardly be possible. If it were, it would either be discovered or not discovered. If not discovered, it would be an evil, but not a ruinous one. If it were discovered, then

(VI.) Any irregularity in the proceedings of the college could be readily corrected by the Supreme Court, which would have the power to execute, as well as the authority to render, its decrees.

There is one further objection to the plan which it may be well to notice. It is the only one of practical importance that has ever been offered, although it does not profess to touch the merits of the plan.

It may be said that, however the plan may deserve adoption, the people will not adopt it. This may be true. It is a sad fact, if it is true. But is it true? But is it true? Probably. If it had the vigorous support of two such earnest and able workers as the late Senator Morton, it would certainly be understood; and, if understood, the controlling class of our people has sense enough and virtue enough and power enough to adopt it. The idea that the people cannot be brought to give up any part of their high prerogative of voting directly for the president is an idea akin to the common and cowardly surrender of all hope in our future. It is an error which has its foundation in the arrogation of all wisdom and virtue to ourselves. The average American voter may be a blind fool; but the American citizen, who really controls the policy of the country, is not. He is always as willing as we are to give up what can fairly be asked of him in the interests of his government. He has never failed to do it. If Congress will but take up the discussion of this plan, it will be at once understood by every clear-headed reading man in the country; and this point gained (unless many able men have mistaken its merits), it will prove amply able afterwards to stand by its own strength.

LOUISVILLE, KY.

TEMPLE BODLEY.

VOL. XII.

28

THE TURF FRAUDS AND THE DETECTIVES.

THE case known as the "Turf Frauds," and closely following it the "Trial of the Detectives," have lately been served up to the amazed British public like a novel in two parts. The earlier cause was watched with much interest and satisfaction, by reason of the ingenuity of the frauds, and the singular betrayals of the weak and foolish sides of human character. It was not too serious to be entertaining. But the subsequent developments aroused very different sentiments. The exposure of the corruption of some who had long ranked high among the most trusted members of the public detective police force could not be witnessed with equanimity. Scotland Yard was reverenced by the comfortable Briton as one of the institutions of the realm; and he experienced a dread quaking and ghastly sense of general uncertainty, when he found that this much-respected protective organization, so fair and goodly heretofore in his confiding eyes, was in fact false-hearted and the snug abiding-place of the vulgarest forms of dishonesty. The story is a difficult one to throw into an agreeable or even into a tolerably connected narrative; nor is it marked by any incidents of peculiar interest to the legal profession. The trials ran their course smoothly enough, without giving rise to any important questions of law, or to any noteworthy points in the arguments of counsel or in the charge from the bench. The tale is simply of the conduct of an elaborate scheme of fraud, throughout which the detective police were in close and effective conspiracy with the swindlers whom it was their business to bring to justice.

The most interesting character in the corps of knaves was Harry Benson. He was about twenty-nine years of age, and was said to be the son of a merchant of good standing and handsome fortune, resident in Paris. Certainly, the acquirements and manners of the young man showed that he had enjoyed every advantage in the way of education and training: he was an excellent linguist and a man of rare general cultivation in scholarly and social ways. These advantages served to adorn and improve

an intellect naturally quick, ingenious and penetrating. With a taste for all the amenities of life, and the power and opportunity to enjoy them in an honorable manner and by respectable means, there seems to have been conjoined an innate devil in the nature of the man, constantly and irresistibly impelling him to crooked courses. Apparently he preferred to attain by knavery the money which it seems that he could have had more surely, and even more abundantly, in an honest career; and he sought to gain admission to pleasant houses as a mysterious unknown, rather than to take his natural place in the same circles by acknowledged right and in his proper character. But he always carefully cloaked his family connections, and the secrecy which his relatives and he himself have sought to preserve upon this point appears to have been respected with more than usual courtesy by the inquisitors of the reporting corps.

Benson's first known exploit in rascality took place at the close of the Franco-Prussian war. He then appeared in London in the character of Maire of Chateaudun, seeking -and with successto lay hands upon a portion of the charitable funds raised and distributed at the Mansion House. The tale of woe and disaster which he narrated, on behalf of his despoiled and starving fellowtownsmen, further caused many a private purse-string to be unloosed for him in the rich and charitable capital. During his stay, which he prolonged for about two weeks, he himself certainly was not suffered to go either hungry or naked. Hospitable doors swung wide for him, and his knavish legs found an allotted space beneath the groaning mahogany of city magnates. Of substantial plunder he carried off with him upwards of £1,000. It is needless to say that the wretched citizens of Chateaudun were never made aware of this mission of their self-elected mayor. Yet the fellow was not, at this stage of his career, altogether devoid of a real sense of shame; for, being caught within the grasp of the law, tried, convicted, and sentenced to a year's imprisonment in Newgate, his feelings were so wrought upon by the sense of his own condition, and of the disgrace which he had brought upon his family, that he sought to destroy himself by setting fire to the clothing of the bed on which he lay. He was rescued before death actually ensued, but not before he had undergone grave injury. For a long time afterward his lower limbs were utterly paralyzed; and he was discharged from jail apparently a helpless cripple. It was