It is this last point which is clearly and forcibly presented in the article of our contributor, and which it will behoove the Reformers not to overlook. Nothing is more characteristic of the American mind, in reference to political ideas, than its strong conservatism. This fact, which has often puzzled foreign observers accustomed to connect democracy with innovating tendencies and violent fluctuations, is yet easily explained. Though ours is a new country, its system of government is really older than that of almost any other civilized country. In the century during which it has existed intact and without any material modification the institutions of most other nations have undergone a complete change, in some cases of form and structure, in others of theory and essence. Even England, which boasts of the stability of its government and its immunity from the storms that have overturned so many thrones and disorganized so many states, has experienced a fundamental, though gradual and peaceable, revolution. There, as elsewhere, the centre of power has changed, the chain of tradition has been broken, and new conceptions of the functions of government and its relations to the governed have taken the place of the old ones. But in America nothing of this kind has occurred: the "old order" has not passed away, nor have its foundations undergone the least change; the municipal and colonial institutions under which we first exercised the right of self-government, and the Constitution which gave us our national baptism, are still the fountain of all our political ideas; and our party struggles are not waged about new principles or animated by new watch words, but are fenced and guided by the maxims transmitted by the founders of the republic. This is our strength and our safeguard against wild experiments, but it is also an impediment to every suggestion of improvement. It binds us to the letter of tradition, leads us to confound the accidental with the essential, and gives to certain notions and certain words a potency which must be described as an anachronism. We still use the language of the Revolutionary epoch, recognize no perils but those against which our ancestors had to guard, and put faith in the efficacy of methods that have no longer an object, and of phrases that have lost their original significance. Because George III. distributed offices at his pleasure as rewards, and bound the holders to party services in conformity with his will, the sovereign people is to do the same. "Rotation in office" having been the means in the eighteenth century of dispelling political stagnation and checking jobbery and corruption, it is still the only process for correcting abuses and getting the public service properly performed. The prime duty of all good citizens is to emulate the incessant political activity of their patriotic forefathers, and it is owing solely to a too general neglect of this duty that ballot-stuffing and machine-running, and all