exist, or has required reconstruction, before the maturity of the debt which was originally incurred for it. There is neither effectual inspection nor rigid accountability. The contractor has pocketed his money in haste, and the municipality repents at leisure.

This vast aggregate of debt has been accumulated in some of the States subject to a constitutional or legislative provision which limits the total of municipal indebtedness to five per cent. of the valuation of taxable property; and also to legislation which establishes a maximum rate of permissible taxation. The former rule has in places been defied, and at times evaded, by political greed, which has so raised the valuation as to satisfy its lust within the lawful rate of assessment. Where political favoritism and official peculation have run wanton, and thievery has become too bold by success, private association outside the legal functionaries, who were themselves chained to the car of the corrupt mob which controlled their election, has inspired and organized successful revolution. But this once done, the reforming association dissolves, vigilance ceases, the wrath of virtue is appeased, while vice again in silence prepares its campaign in club, or caucus, or primary, and advances with stealthy movements upon the abandoned lines. Vicious politics are ever vigilant, while public virtue is only aroused by a blow in the face. Self-interest is so keen-eyed that its wedge finds the smallest crevice which may be widened. Public interest becomes aware of it only after it has stumbled into the chasm. The constant element in municipal affairs is the unremitting desire of the politician to gather masses of votes, and of the contractors and placemen who furnish them to prey upon the city treasury. The people who do not pay are always ready to create debts against the people who must pay. They who do not pay the piper are ever ready to dance to his music.

There is radical error somewhere in the general municipal system. From time to time the right sense of the community is shocked by announcements of peculation and waste of municipal funds and mismanagement in the affairs of cities. Our leading towns have had experience of the iron grip of a "ring," usually composed of politicians of local fame, who have surrounded themselves with a force of party organizations so strong as to defy the efforts of honest citizens to dislodge them. At times they have been strong enough to hold courts at bay, at VOL. CXXXVII.-NO. 322.

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times have controlled the local elective judiciary, and have even shut their gates against regular processes of law. In the most remarkable case in our annals this pillage of public funds was only revealed by an independent press, and punished by the slow but firm uprising of an indignant community, which usurped the duties of the regular officers of the law. Yet, while these words are written, the same city discovers another conspiracy of officials, by which $169,000 is pillaged from its treasury.

Nor has this been the only remarkable feature of our municipal history. In compliance with all the forms of law, our municipalities have occasionally been bankrupted by reckless extravagance in incurring liabilities. To communities as well as to individuals come periods of exuberant self-confidence, in which the spirit of speculative extravagance seizes the people, and a fever of borrowing takes possession of the masses. Unjustifiable works are undertaken; pay-day comes, and purse and credit are both exhausted. Then the disgrace of repudiation is added to financial dishonor. These results have appeared even where the law has required a popular vote to ratify a proposed debt. Where bankruptcy and repudiation have both been avoided, our towns have often struggled for years in adversity, groaning under burdens of assessments, which have destroyed their prosperity, checked their growth, and turned to regions less afflicted with taxation a tide of wealth and population which would have enriched them under a safe administration.

The eyes of the Argus of Party watch the National Government. Even incipient evil is there detected, challenged, exposed, and stifled. Criticism is so swift that it often assails the possibility of fraud before it exists. The legal forces of the nation are very active and vigorous, never so much so as now; and they spare neither political friend nor foe. In a less degree the several State governments are vigilantly watched, and fraud and mismanagement have at most a brief and spasmodic development. The sense of financial honor among the States- a few exceptions reserved-has in late years advanced with great strides. Political partisanship no longer dares to defend crime, nor to shield the criminal, nor to accept a sham as the performance of a contract. But the nearer we come to municipal selfgovernment by popular vote, the more apparent become the evils of peculation, fraud, and maladministration. Vigilance is reduced to a minimum. Daily personal association lulls suspicion.

Suspicion goes abroad with open eyes, but sleeps at home. Shabby work is done in the absence of authoritative inspection. The voter grumbles at a State tax of two and one-half mills, as in Iowa, while the wastefulness and extravagance of the officials of his own municipality load him with a local taxation of thirty, forty, and even fifty mills on the dollar. Party responsibility and party watchfulness are not well maintained in cities, or exist with greatly diminished vigor. Hostile party managers are often sagaciously admitted to a share in the profits.

In the smaller towns, the official prizes are not contested except by a grade of men who have small stakes in the towns, or none at all,—often by men who do not own a town lot nor pay a tax. A mayor of that class rewards with the subordinate offices the associates to whom he owes his election. The more the grade of officers is lowered, the more unwilling are responsible citizens to accept the municipal offices. The mischief breeds in and in. The local press is often brought into alliance with municipal party robbers.

But even when such officers keep within the law, there re main their want of real interest in the prosperity of the town, and their ignorance of the methods by which a city secures a solid growth, with economy in its development. Bridges, culverts, and sewers are built for the profit of contractors, and are swept away by the next flood. Speculative pavements are laid for which bonds are issued, and they decay or break up before they are paid for. Wild contracts are entered into, binding the city with irreversible force for twenty or thirty years, for some speculative gas-works, or water-works, or railway liability. The city suddenly fills its lawful margin of indebtedness. Indispensable appropriations then become unlawful, injunctions are issued, financial dishonor follows. Our experience in these respects furnishes so many illustrations that no argument is required to convince men of the need of municipal reform. The municipality is now the most wasteful department of our entire civil organization.

All efforts hitherto made-save one-to protect the public against municipal misrule have been limited to the surface of the organization. They have been directed to one of two objectseither to shift responsibility from one set of officers to another, or to diminish the aggregate of their powers for mischief. The relief afforded by the former must be temporary so long as the

evil lives in the motive force behind them. The latter remedy is effective only to the extent of diminishing the scope of the mismanagement and the amount of waste. It does not cure the evil nor destroy its living roots. The evil principle lies in this, that elected authority is nearly independent of proper responsibility. The party that creates the liability is not the party that supplies the funds. The party in real interest is not the party really in control. One disburses at will the money which the other is compelled to raise. It is an association of citizen stock-holders, where the owners of a minority of the stock control the majority of ownership and interest. There would be little demand for shares in any insurance or banking company managed on that principle.

If we can clear the ground of the existing system, we may be able to find the solid basis of a safe municipal organization.

The unit of our civil society is the town or township. Originally, every resident therein was identified in interest with nearly every other resident. The small population had little diversity of interest. The great majority had indeed identity of interest. A town meeting settled questions of policy. Individual equality of control rested on community of interest and responsibilities. This condition was outgrown with the growth of population. The Legislature then granted charters prescribing the limit of local government, and authorizing in larger towns a chosen body of men to perform all the civil functions of the locality. All citizens were electors of this body, because there had been no development of such diversity of interest and of motive as to disclose the financial danger in which the minority of numbers might be placed. As the danger was more and more revealed, two separate bodies were provided for and elected by divisions of the same general constituency, the one to be a check on the other, and to secure deliberation before action. But perils still revealed themselves, and a limitation on their authority to create liability and to impose taxes, as well as making certain officers non-elective, was enacted by the sovereign legislature. At this point began the conflict between the irresponsible majority of numbers and the responsible majority of interest, the former clamoring for complete sovereign self-government by numbers, the latter for protection against it. The war is now at that stage of the debate.

Certainly, universal suffrage is our rule of political government. It is justly applied to State and nation in their respective supreme legislative and executive functions, because the universal scope of sovereign law and its administration embraces all classes, even criminal and pauper. But a city is a subordinate creature of the law, without sovereignty, without power to declare a crime or to fix its punishment; without army, navy, or militia; without power over civil rights or liberties. It is a corporation, more resembling an insurance or manufacturing corporation, than a political government. It has only partial power, under general laws imposed upon it, to regulate its own affairs, and for the special security and promotion of its own material interests. It is a simple business organization, in which some citizens have invested much more largely than others, and where some have not invested at all. A mayor of Boston has said that the residents of that town who pay nothing beyond a poll-tax constitute a majority of its voters. In such cases, is

it right that the major part of universal suffrage should create the city's liabilities and control its destinies? Should they settle its taxes, make its debts, control its line of improvement, fix the condition of its trade, and fill and empty its treasury? They who pay no taxes on real property, or personal or business interests, are usually a transient population, without either an interest or a disposition to care for the future progress of the town. The only municipal function which concerns them is, perhaps, the school and sanitary regulation; and in these there is no diversity of interest between them and the permanent classes of the population. If it is a question of improving the city and making it attractive, no one is so much interested in this as the permanent tax-paying people whose homes and property are pledged to its prosperity. The divergence of interests begins precisely where useful disbursement ends and extravagance and waste enter in. Those who profit by this are not the persons who pay for it. When one laughs, the other weeps. The latest illustration of this is seen at Elizabeth, N. J. The same experience, unripened, is going on to-day in a score of other towns.

The principle of universal suffrage rests upon the general community of civil rights and liberties, of interest, and of civil liabilities. Each man, as one may say, owns stock in the national and State sovereignty. But civil rights, liberties,