Exposures of the evil of boss government were frequent after 1870, and in most cities occasional revolts of outraged citizens overturned the machines, but in the long run the citizen was no match for the professional politician. In the unequal contest city government became steadily worse in America at a time when European city government was rapidly improving. States, too, were afflicted with machine politics, and before 1890 it appeared that the dominant national party derived its most valuable support from organized business that profited by the partnership. A minority of Americans fought continually for better and cleaner government as the evils of boss rule became more visible. One of them, Bishop Potter, of New York, gained wide hearing through a sermon preached at the centennial of the Constitution, in 1887, in which he turned from the usual patriotic congratulation to discuss actual government. The keenest interest in the subject was aroused by the _American Commonwealth_ of James Bryce. Not since Alexis de Tocqueville published his _Democracy in America_, in 1835, had any foreign observer made an equally intimate study of American life, until James Bryce, a young English historian, began a series of visits to the United States in the early seventies. For nearly twenty years Bryce repeated his visits, living at home a full life in his Oxford professorate, in the House of Commons, and in the Ministry. In America he knew every one worth knowing, and he saw the remoter regions of the West as well as the older society of the East. In 1888 he brought out the result of his studies in two volumes that were filled with admiration for the United States and with disheartening observation upon its practices. One of its chapters cut so close that its victim brought suit for libel, but American opinion accepted the book as a friendly picture and regarded attacks upon it as further evidence of its inherent truth. Probably no book in a generation so profoundly influenced American thought and so specifically directed the course of American reform. It became a textbook at once, teaching the truth that corruption and misgovernment were non-partisan, and until the Populists took them up the movements for reform were non-partisan as well.