“Simply to disfranchise any district in which the law could not be enforced by means of combinations of its people. On application to the highest court of the state, an order might be granted that no polls should be held in one, or more, towns, or counties, in which combinations existed of a force sufficient to prevent the laws from being put in force. Nothing could be more just than to say that men who will not obey the law shall not have a voice in making it, and to me it really seems that some such provision would be the best possible expedient to check this growing evil. It would be choking the enemy with his own food.” “Why was it not done, sir?” “Simply because our sages were speculating on votes, and not on principles. They will talk to you like so many books touching the vices of all foreign systems, but are ready to die in defence of the perfection of their own.” “Why was it necessary to make a new constitution, the other day,” asked Sarah, innocently, “if the old one was so very excellent?” “Sure enough—the answer might puzzle wiser heads than yours, child. Perfection requires a great deal of tinkering, in this country. We scarcely adopt one plan that shall secure everybody’s rights and liberties, than another is broached, to secure some newly-discovered rights and liberties. With the dire example before them, of the manner in which the elective franchise is abused, in this anti-rent movement, the sages of the land have just given to the mass the election of judges; as beautiful a scheme for making the bench coalesce with the jury-box as human ingenuity could invent!”