public, hecatombs for the wolves, precarious bones for the watchdogs." The details in the article are precise, and if they are to be trusted it may be doubted whether the claims of the United States to possess a cheap government can be maintained, for it is not cheap to pay responsible executive officers a precarious pittance per annum if now and then it costs a million dollars to change them. Mr. Secretary Blaine has thrice declared that the election in October 1880 in the State of Maine, a model New England State, was carried by money. His opponents declared that he and his party were as bad, and that they too flooded the towns with money. What renders the situation more dangerous is the fact that the men who provide the money for running these enormously expensive political combinations are either seekers after, or holders of, office, and the inference is that they seek to control Government, or, as Mr. Parton puts it, that "the Government is coming to be rather an appendage to a circle of wealthy operators than a restraint upon them." That is indeed a serious proposition, and the result of observation goes to support the idea that it is valid. The small man is in office, but the big man, his master, is outside. The mischief is brought prominently forward in connection with the sale of public lands in the North-West, which have been claimed as the heritage of the people, and indeed of all the nations of the world. The government land attracted the hardy labour of all countries, covering the western west with thriving towns and populous counties. But now the prairies are skinned by rich men, by "land-grabbers," people who buy up tracts of twenty thousand or thirty thousand acres wherever they can lay their hands upon them, evading the law and filling the western world with roving labourers who work on these prodigious farms in summer and starve in winter. This is, we are told, the result of "government by lobby."