enemy.” In a word the Democratic spirit ignored efficiency in office as well as in the voter; and the office became what it still continues to be, a reward, a token of gratitude for political activity. The lamentable effects of manhood suffrage continued in full sweep after the death of Harrison and the return of the Jackson Democracy to power under Polk in 1845. The resultant flagrant misgovernment caused growing popular resentment which might have produced valuable results had it not been for the slavery agitation which soon drove all other political questions into the background. Already in 1843 the dissatisfaction of large numbers was displayed by the organization of the American or Knownothing party, which born in New York and baptized with blood in Philadelphia rapidly spread through the country. Formed ostensibly to check the growing power of Irish Roman Catholic politicians, its real grievance was manhood suffrage misrule. Its leaders mistook the cause of the new political scandals. They wrongly attributed them exclusively to the Irish; they were really due to the effect of the voting power of the newly enfranchised and organized political floaters, both foreign and American. Polk’s election was secured by the machine in 1844: “By the almost solid foreign vote still unfit for the duties of American citizenship; by the vicious and criminal classes in all the great cities of the North and in New Orleans; by the corrupt politicians, who found ignorance and viciousness tools ready forged to their hands, wherewith to perpetrate the gigantic frauds without which the election would have been lost.” (Roosevelt, _Life of Benton_, pp. 290, 291.) On Pierce’s inauguration in 1853, says Rhodes, “the importunate begging for official positions in a republic where it was so easy to earn a living was nothing less than disgraceful. Office seekers crowded the public receptions of the President, and while greeting him in the usual way, attempted at the same time to urge their claims, actually thrusting their petitions into his hands.” (_Rhodes_, I, 339.) Meantime the bribery of voters and of legislatures rapidly grew more common and shameless, and about this time the purchase of legislation began to be a scandal. Referring to this period, Prof. Reinsch says: “In those earlier days things were often managed with little adroitness. There was much indiscriminate and broadcast bribery; to buy men for a moderate amount per vote was the acme of ambition to the successful lobbyist.” (_American Legislatures and Legislative Methods_, p. 231.) And Farrand writes, referring to the same period: