hard cash; hut many a man, who has a soul above that particular form of transaction, sees no harm in taking an office as the equivalent of his franchise. Another wants his particular line of industry protected, and subordinates everything to that, without so much as a qualm or a misgiving. If his vote was not given to him that he might use it for the advancement of his business interests, he does not understand anything about the matter. Others give their votes as a matter of private favor; others, again, under the influence of private spite. Most have no better reason to allege than that their party has set up this or that candidate, and that they mean to support the party nomination. The candidate may be a man they would not trust with their private cash, or put at the head of any financial institution in which they had a stake, but at the bidding of party they will vote him into any public position, district. State, or Federal. The party caucus gives a consecration more potent than any holy oil, wiping out scars, tattoo-marks, and every species of blemish, and making the nominee "good enough" to represent the nation in the very highest seat of power. A vote so used is not treated as a public trust; it becomes merely the means of gratifying the selfish spirit of faction.
The principle we contend for is this: that the measure we mete to the rulers of the past, and to all sole depositaries of power, we should mete to ourselves. We have the power now in our own hands; the question is, What have we done with it—what are we doing with it? We know unfortunately that thousands and hundreds of thousands of voters would utterly spurn the idea of any responsibility attaching to their use of the suffrage. In this matter we can not be saved by any "remnant." If the majority go wrong here, the whole nation will go wrong; and its public policy may be determined to most lamentable issues. If it be asked what all this has to do with the scientific interests which this magazine is understood to advocate, we would answer, in the first place, that the function of science, in that broad sense in which we understand it, is to give a wise direction to the whole of human life; and, secondly, that the interests of science are intimately involved in the general condition of public opinion and public morality. Both of these considerations we shall continue to elucidate and enforce; meantime, we would press upon each individual citizen the consideration, which there is no evading, that the exercise of all political power and influence is a sacred trust, and that it is no less shameful a thing for the citizen of a free republic to give his vote under the influence of private motives apart from the sense of public duty, than it was for any of the despots of old to have made their larger powers mainly subservient to their own gratification.
A JEWISH EXPLANATION OF JEWISH SUCCESS.
One of the best contributions to the discussion of the Jewish question, that we have seen, is the article of Mr. Lucien Wolf, himself a Jew, in a recent number of the "Fortnightly Review." Mr. Wolf takes the ground that the chief reason why the Jews have been hated and persecuted is that they have possessed a form of religion and a system of morals and of self-government which have given them an advantage over all other races in the battle of life. Taking up an expression of Mr. Goldwin Smith's, he admits that Judaism is a system of "legalism"; but he goes on to say that "legalism" is what is wanted for this world—method, adaptation of means to ends, of effort to conditions, careful preservation of all that tends to superiority, and equally careful removal of all that makes for inferiority, whether physical, mental,
