On the first cause but little need be said. In America the race for wealth is keener than anywhere else; the almighty dollar is worshipped, and most men are in a hurry to make their piles before the end of next week. A large proportion of the business men allow themselves time for nothing but money making, and those who have leisure regard politics as disreputable. In England our best citizens are glad to serve the commonwealth at their own cost; in America, a rich and cultured man would in many cities be looked upon by his friends as either a crank or a boodler if he announced his intention of adopting a political career. On the subject of manhood suffrage generally and its desirability or otherwise, I have no intention of entering in this place. But coming to the result of manhood suffrage on American politics, few can doubt that it has exercised in some ways a most evil effect. If all the citizens to whom the ballot has been given were intelligent and educated, and knew anything of the politics of the country which they are helping to rule, then suffrage would be robbed of much of its evil effects. But at present the peasant who has been picked from the wilds of Connemara, the lazzaroni from Naples and Rome, the offscourings of the slums of the cities of Central Europe, are able to out-vote in many towns the genuine Americans. They are brought under the influence of ambitious and unscrupulous political organisers almost as soon as they land at New York, and too often their ballot papers are cast solid for the maintenance of fraud, falsehood and robbery. The results of machine voting, the rule of the "bosses" and saloon politics can perhaps best be seen in one well-known instance. The city of New York, the metropolis of America, has actually been controlled for some years, not by its inhabitants, but by an ex-drink seller, Richard Croker, and his subordinates. This man was originally a young rough, in due course he developed into a saloon keeper, and after a time he resigned his bar for the more profitable employment of politician. He now holds no office under Government, he has no ostensible means of earning a living; yet he is able to maintain a magnificent country mansion and a town palace; he owns as fine a team of trotting horses as most men in the State; and he is well known to be enormously wealthy. His horses are said to be worth seventy-four thousand dollars, and he owns a half interest in a stud farm valued at a quarter of a million. When he travels the railway companies provide specially luxuriant cars for his special accommodation, and he receives such homage and abject worship as exceed the subservience shown by the poorest-spirited courtiers to any petty princeling. Over his long-distance telephone he controls local politicians and the State Legislature, and he can wreck Bills or bring them into law almost as he pleases.