defeat would have cost to mankind; the deplorable results of the indefinite postponement of the American Union with all its blessings of peace and prosperity, and the perpetuation here on this continent of the tariffs, strifes, petty wars and tyrannies of Europe and South America. When one tries to imagine the world without the United States of America as a beneficent enlightening force, one is appalled at the bare possibility that such a calamity might have been allowed to fall upon the world; and yet it was possible had it not been that Hamilton, Washington and the other leaders in that business were eighteenth century statesmen, staunch, efficient and determined, and not a bunch of twentieth century cowardly, spineless, brainless, heartless politicians, the product of machine and boss rule, such as would probably be in charge of any similar movement in the present year of grace, 1920. CHAPTER III THE SUFFRAGE IS NOT A NATURAL RIGHT BUT A FUNCTION OF GOVERNMENT AND MAY THEREFORE PROPERLY BE RESTRICTED TO THOSE COMPETENT TO EXERCISE IT. Those citizens who think that they have or anybody has or can have a natural right to vote are absolutely mistaken. There is a general impression that such a right exists, created partly by the twaddlers who write on politics for schools and colleges; but it is a false one, and it is seriously misleading, because it negatives in advance all effort to elevate the standard of the electorate by excluding the notoriously unfit from its membership. The citizen votes not in the exercise of a right or a privilege, but in performance of a governmental function, involving the execution of a trust which should be confined to those competent to exercise it.