They managed the nomination of members of the State legislature. Even the Federal officials in the custom-house and post-office were forced into a dependent alliance with them, because their support was so valuable to the leaders in Federal politics that it had to be purchased by giving them their way in city affairs.” (Bryce, _American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 405.) “Machine politics are completely subversive both of democracy and of the principle of responsibility for which democracy is supposed to stand. It constitutes nothing except a system of self-appointed rulers, and the principle of elective representation of which we boast becomes a farce. Public servants and officers can in some way, usually, be made responsible for the administration of government, but political bosses never, or at least not until they have retired with plunder enough to live without politics. The despotism of Russia can lay some claim to legitimacy. The Czar obtains his throne and power by the forms of law and has a healthy fear of something, but not so with our bosses. They nominate our candidates for office and mortgage their support, so that we are ruled by men who are not elected to govern us at all, our nominal officers being the mere puppets of the machine. Public opinion is defied until its patience is exhausted, when it is gratified in some caprice and it lapses back again into indifference and the old game goes on. Property of all kinds is blackmailed directly or indirectly, and business terrorized. Even vice and crime come in for tribute as is well known. This is anarchy, not government, and yet we indulge the pleasing illusion that democracy is a paradise.” (Hyslop, _Democracy_, pp. 32-33.) And further: “It is the insolent disregard of public welfare, the deliberate exclusion of intelligent and honest men from office, the refusal to reason about public policy, the shameless corruption of its leaders, its organized methods of deception, bribery, and blackmail with public jobbery and frauds upon the tax-payers, that make machine politics so despicable in the estimation of the public conscience.” (_Idem_, p. 268.)