Besides secrecy, great skill is required in the making of treaties and constitutions. The nations whose rulers and diplomatic agents are chosen under a system of universal suffrage, of government by demagogues and platform ranters who are allowed and expected to distribute diplomatic posts among their supporters; such nations will suffer in competition with those whose polity brings to the front and puts in command a set of trained educated statesmen and diplomats. The two greatest triumphs of the United States in its entire history were diplomatic achievements; and both were accomplished by statesmen trained under the old property qualification suffrage system, before manhood suffrage had cheapened our institutions. It was diplomacy, and secret diplomacy at that, which under the astute management of Franklin obtained for the American States the aid of France and made successful the American Revolution. It was diplomacy, secret and highly skilled diplomacy, which procured in 1803 the cession to the United States by France of Louisiana, from which territory nine great states and the greater part of four others were created and which made the United States a real power in the world. The story of that acquisition as described by Fiske is that of one of the greatest diplomatic achievements in history; and, after making all allowances for good luck in the affair, we find there pictured a statesmanship and a patriotism calculated to thrill the heart of every American. The men who were most conspicuous on the American side from first to last in that transaction, were not of the class of politicians who are to-day being chosen for high office by the popular vote; they were Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Robert R. Livingston; all of them men of position, property, good family, descent and education. All but Washington were college graduates. All were brought to the front by a system established upon the votes of a propertied electorate.