as a prerequisite to his candidacy? Such tests would be inconsistent with the very theory of manhood suffrage as now entertained. That standards will ultimately have to be applied even to elective offices if democracy is to prevail no far-seeing man can doubt. And there is nothing impracticable about the suggestion. Even now, in the states where judges are elective, custom requires that the candidate shall have previously passed an examination for admission to the bar. There is no reason whatever why all candidates for elective offices should not be required to be reasonably qualified for the offices they seek; nor why the electors themselves should not be such persons as are qualified to vote, and have proved their fitness for the ballot by the record of their lives in the community. But the essential quality of manhood suffrage is that it rejects all tests for voters, and so beginning at the very source of government its anti-efficient influence extends all along the line, and tends to neutralize every effort to elevate the standard of democratic administration. Its spirit is directly opposed to the demand for efficiency in governmental affairs. Efficiency is exclusive, it applies tests, and rejects those who fail. Beginning with the voter, manhood suffrage refuses to apply to him any tests whatever, and denies not only the policy of their application but the right to use them. It views the elective franchise as the personal belonging of the individual, even the most ignorant and degraded, to be used to justify his whim, his pleasure, his spite, his prejudice. The newspapers, unconsciously perhaps, voice this spirit. We constantly read in the public press urgent invitations to vote, addressed to the careless or indifferent in politics, those who presumably have no compelling opinions and are therefore quite unprepared and unfit to vote. Instead of being warned of the wrong and danger of frivolous and ignorant voting, they are urged by the newspapers to go to the polls as if to take part in an amateur baseball game: “Come, join in; even if you don’t do it well; it’s the national game! There are prizes too, the spoils; and though you don’t compete yourself you may have the fun of seeing them distributed, and root for the victors.” People are more careless in voting for high officials than in hiring an office boy. They vote for men whom they do not know even by sight; whose very names are unfamiliar; and are usually quite unashamed of trifling with the suffrage in a manner deserving punishment. This is one result of our cheapening of the franchise.