That the contrast drawn by Mr. Ford between government in Europe and the United States is true and enormously in our favour there can be no doubt. Of course, historical conditions would have retarded or prevented any similar unifying development in Europe, even if that continent had been privileged to enjoy the ministrations of all the most talented party workers of America. And in the United States frontier conditions, the public school, the church, the labour union, the press, and our democratic political creed — for none of which the ordinary politician is directly to be credited—have all worked effectively toward the establishment of “connections of interest among the masses of the people.” But the fact remains that the party worker has played his part, and that it was a very important part indeed in the process. Of course, his motives were largely selfish—personal or party success; and his methods not of the cleanest—direct purchase of votes, petty favours, minor offices for leading representatives of the class or nationality whose votes were desired and so on. At any rate the party worker met the immigrant with open arms, while too many of our educated and propertied people sneered at or ignored him. Let us suppose that the latter attitude had prevailed, and that the despised foreigner had been kept from the polls either by legal means or by other repressive measures. In defence of such procedure it could have been argued that the purity of American institutions was at stake. The slogan “America for Americans,” once so potent in our politics, might have prevailed universally. At the same time our Know-nothing rulers and people might have asserted that they were protecting and cherishing with paternal unselfishness the best interests of the foreign population which, manifestly, was unfit for the exercise of political rights on its own behalf. Clearly by following this policy some of the political evils which have been attributed so frequently to the foreign vote could have been prevented. If immigrants were freely permitted to come to America while all this was going on we should, however, have had in time to reckon with a large class of unfranchised labourers who could hardly have failed to look upon native Americans as poor professors of democracy, or possibly even as oppressors against whom insurrection was fully justified. Immigrants would not have become citizens, America would not have shown the assimilative capacity which is the wonder and despair of Europe.