That the legislative branch of our government has fallen so markedly in public estimation is not, I think, open to denial. To my mind, under the conditions I have referred to, such could not fail to be the case. It has, consequently, lost public confidence. Hence this popular demand for immediate legislation by the People,--this twentieth-century appeal to the Agora and Forum methods which antedate the era of Christ. It is true the world outgrew them two thousand years ago, and they were discarded; but, living in a progressive and not a reactionary period, all that, we are assured, is changed! The heart is no longer on the right-hand side of the body. To secure desired results it is only necessary to start quite fresh, as a mere preliminary discarding all lessons of experience. Such reasoning does not commend itself to my judgment. On the contrary, the failure of the American legislative to command an increasing public confidence, while both natural and obvious, is, if my observation guides me to conclusions in any degree correct, traceable to two reasons. So far as government is concerned, the law-making branch is assumed to be made up of the wisest and the most expert. Meanwhile, it is as a matter of fact chosen by the process I have not over-respectfully referred to as the counting of noses; and, moreover, by an unwritten law more binding than any in the Statute Book, that counting of noses is with us localized. In other words, when it comes to the choice of our law-makers, reducing provincialism to a system we make the local numerical majority supreme, and any one is considered competent to legislate. He can do that, even if by common knowledge he is incompetent or untrustworthy in every other capacity. Localization thus becomes the stronghold of mediocrity, the sure avenue to office of the second-and third-rate man,--he who wishes always to enjoy his share of a little brief authority, to have, he also, a taste of public life. In this respect our American system is, I submit, manifestly and incomparably inferior to the system of parliamentary election existing in Great Britain, itself open to grave criticism. In Great Britain the public man seeks the constituency wherever he can find it; or the constituency seeks its representative wherever it recognizes him. The present Prime Minister of Great Britain, for instance, represents a small Scotch constituency in which he never resided, but by which he was elected more than twenty years ago, and through which he has since consecutively remained in public life. On the other hand, look at the waste and extravagance of the system now and traditionally in use with us. To get into public life a man must not only be in sympathy with the majority of the citizens of the locality in which he lives, but he must continue to be in sympathy with that majority; or, at any election, like Mr. Cannon in the election just held, where for any passing cause a majority of his