when the interests of the latter are supposed to conflict with those of “the people,” it is all up with him. These voters are, moreover, very emotional; they value in a public man what we are accustomed to consider virtues only to be taken into account when estimating private character. Thus, if a man is open-handed and warm-hearted, they consider it as a fair offset to his being a little bit shaky when it comes to applying the eighth commandment to affairs of state. I have more than once heard the statement, “He is very liberal to the poor,” advanced as a perfectly satisfactory answer to the charge that a certain public man was corrupt. Moreover, working men, whose lives are passed in one unceasing round of narrow and monotonous toil, are not unnaturally inclined to pay heed to the demagogues and professional labor advocates who promise if elected to try to pass laws to better their condition; they are hardly prepared to understand or approve the American doctrine of government, which is that the state cannot ordinarily attempt to better the condition of a man or a set of men, but can merely see that no wrong is done him or them by anyone else, and that all alike have a fair chance in the struggle for life--a struggle wherein, it may as well at once be freely though sadly acknowledged, very many are bound to fail, no matter how ideally perfect any given system of government may be. Of course it must be remembered that all these general statements are subject to an immense number of individual exceptions; there are tens of thousands of men who work with their hands for their daily bread and yet put into actual practice that sublime virtue of disinterested adherence to the right, even when it seems likely merely to benefit others, and those others better off than they themselves are; for they vote for honesty and cleanliness, in spite of great temptation to do the opposite, and in spite of their not seeing how any immediate benefit will result to themselves. REASONS FOR THE NEGLECT OF PUBLIC DUTIES BY RESPECTABLE MEN IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES.