vile misrepresentations of reputable people, employment of bogus detectives, venomous falsifiers, a subsidized press, and conspirators who dare any plot or defilement, able to exert political control, and by protecting legislation and by domination of legal appointees of district attorneys and others not in elective but appointive offices." During the memorable campaign of 1896, when political bitterness and intolerance reached perhaps the highest point in the history of the United States, thousands of voters, driven by the scourge of "party regularity," either concealed or disavowed their convictions, and marched under banners that meant repudiation of public and private obligations. Even one of Mr. Cleveland's Cabinet officers, who had stood up bravely for the gold standard, succumbed to party discipline and became an apostate. The intolerant spirit of politics extends to dictation of instruction of students. The prolonged assaults of the protectionists upon Professor Perry and Professor Sumner are well known. The same spirit inspired the attack upon President Andrews, of Brown University, the dismissal of the anti-Populist professors in the Agricultural College of Kansas, and the populistic clamor against certain professors in the universities of Missouri and Texas. That politics produces the same contempt for culture and capacity that war does, evidence is not lacking. "There is," said Senator Grady, of Tammany Hall, apologizing for the appointment of some illiterate to office in New York city, "a class of persons, chiefly the educated, who thinks that if a man begins a sentence with a small letter, or uses a small 'i' in referring to himself, or misspells common words, that he is unfit for public office. Nothing could be further from the truth," he continues, using an argument that the barbarians that overran Europe might have made; "it is an idea that only the aristocracy of culture could hold.... We do not want the people ruled by men," he adds, giving a demagogic twist to his reasoning, "who are above them, or who fancy they are because they have wealth or learning or blood, nor by men who are below them, but we want them ruled in a genuine democracy by men who are the representatives in all their ways of thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting, of the average man." What is wanted, in other words, is not men anxious to acquit themselves with ability and fidelity to the public interests, but men that will look after the interests of their organization and do the other work of political _condottieri_. It can, of course, be a matter of no consequence whether such men spell or speak correctly, or whether they conduct themselves like boors and ruffians.[5]