criminals put on the bench by the election machinery; a judiciary in six or seven states so tainted that the foul smell reached the nostrils of a visitor from other lands. This state of things makes one suspect a low standard for the entire judiciary, or at least for that of each of those six or seven suspected states, for it indicates the unscrupulous power of politics. In a state where even two or three judges sell or barter justice for politics, who will not suspect that others, promoted by the same bosses, or by the same system, are incompetent, careless or otherwise unfit? The third class of public officers, being that which is generally styled administrative, ought not, any more than the judiciary, to be affected by politics and should therefore never be chosen by popular election. The function of the legislator is to enact new measures in accordance with the progressive needs of the people, and he should therefore to a certain extent consult their wishes in framing legislation. But the administrative official is there to obey and to enforce the law as it exists; his duty is merely that of an honest, painstaking expert, and his office should be appointive and should never be treated as political. This distinction between legislative and administrative officials is plain and wide to the vision of any man with the least knowledge of government; and yet in preparing the constitutions and laws with which they deign to provide us, it is frequently ignored by politicians in pursuit of political power and patronage; the pretense being the furtherance of democratic institutions and the rule of the people. And so in the great state of New York the attorney general, the state engineer and surveyor, the secretary of state and the state treasurer have been made and are elective officials; and since female suffrage has been established in that state we have the edifying spectacle of those important offices being filled and their incumbents chosen, not by the governor of the state, nor by any body of experienced lawyers, engineers, business men or others somewhat acquainted with the workings of the respective offices and candidates, but by four millions of miscellaneous people; including motormen, hod carriers, servant maids, seamstresses, society ladies, firemen, boiler makers, farm laborers, gamblers, loafers, etc., of whom ninety-nine out of a hundred have no idea what an attorney general or a state engineer is, nor what are the duties of any of these officials, and would be unable the day after election even to name the candidates for whom they voted for those offices. In fact the gross ineptitude of the institution of manhood suffrage is nowhere more strikingly apparent than in the election of state officers in the Empire State.