meetings large or small are organized, and resolutions couched in peremptory language are passed and presented at the proper quarters. Should the officials prove refractory, they are apt to find their motives impugned, their “records” and personal history unearthed, and their characters publicly assailed, all from the same source. All this, which often amounts to coercion, is so frequently practised upon public bodies and their members as to have become a recognized feature of American public life. A large addition to the list of political scandals contained in this book might be made by recourse to the archives of these watch dog associations and to the published reports of the charges made by them from time to time against the membership of the state and city legislative and administrative bodies, and to the evidence collected by them in support thereof, but space will not permit even the most condensed recital of this material. Let it suffice to present here the societies themselves, composed as they are of thousands of our citizens of best standing and information, as witnesses to the bad character and reputation of manhood suffrage. By their very existence they go far to establish the significant fact that the manhood suffrage state and local governments of the United States have utterly forfeited the respect and confidence of the American people. It must not be supposed that by the work of these watch dog associations the evil of manhood suffrage operations is sensibly alleviated. On the contrary, when carefully considered, that work, though presumably well intended, must be considered as a public misfortune, and as resulting in an aggravation rather than a diminution of the evils of our misgovernment. In an individual instance their efforts may produce good effects limited to that special transaction, just as might be said of any voluntary interference with constituted authority; but in theory and in principle and in the large and final results, the practice of such interference is and must be politically noxious, and the case to justify it even in one instance must be indeed extreme. The public-spirited citizens who form an important part of their membership probably do not realize just what they are doing when they coerce the will of the chosen representatives of the people. They would be horrified at the suggestion of using physical force or physical threats upon legislators to compel them to deviate from their own best judgment; and yet they do not scruple to use what they call moral force to the same purpose, and such moral force as almost amounts to physical stress and coercion. The difference in effect between threatening a member of the legislature with a cudgel or with printed defamation issued by a powerful clique or league is not always appreciable. In either case the general result is the adoption of measures or modifications thereof reflecting rather the views of the threatening meddler than those of the public official in