Under the property qualification régime young politicians had the inspiration of great and highly respected leaders, and the incentive of a prospect of ultimately filling their places. Among such leaders in New York in the first quarter of the nineteenth century were Alexander Hamilton; John Jay; James Kent; De Witt Clinton; John Lansing; Rufus King; Gouverneur Morris; Robert R. Livingston; Brockholst Livingston; William W. Van Ness; Daniel D. Tompkins; Nicholas Fish; Erastus Root; John C. Spencer and William L. Marcy; fifteen distinguished names; a number proportionately according to population equivalent to one hundred and fifty at the present time. Each of them was eminent in something; most of them in several things; and all are still illustrious in the annals of the state. Some of their political acts are open to criticism, but they were all men of superior mentality, for the old system put the best brains we had into politics, while the present system inevitably puts into public place the cheapest and poorest, so that we are now, as Bagehot says, “deprived of the tangible benefits we derive from the application to politics of thoroughly cultivated minds.” The present public attitude towards officialdom not only indicates a steady consciousness of its inferiority, but a disbelief in its honesty and a plain distrust of its intentions. By many persons, officialdom and the people are supposed to be engaged in chronic warfare, and office holders as soon as chosen are assumed to be potential rascals; so that it becomes the presumptive duty of every patriotic organization and of every public-spirited citizen to watch their every movement and to sound the alarm at each of their expected attacks on the rights of the people. Eternal vigilance is popularly urged as the only means of security against the misconduct or calamitous blundering of the office-holding politicians. Nor is this attitude confined to the upper classes. Politicians are fond of pretending affection for the working people and that the manhood suffrage was a gift especially to that class. But none more than the wage earners mistrust politicians; they are the first to suspect official misconduct, and the most outspoken in its denunciation. Listen to their comments when a public question comes up in which they are concerned. They are not then heard to say that their interests are safe in the hands of the good officials chosen by the people; they are more apt to complain of improper influence, “frame-ups,” bribery actually suspected or expected, “playing politics” and the like. Many of them in despair of democracy have become socialists, and find in the rascality and inefficiency of the manhood suffrage government of the day ample material for argument. The remainder unable to see any possibility of a remedy usually assume an attitude of resignation, evincing a desire to profit by whatever little pickings may be had from the political feasts of the more fortunate.