wise multiplication of judges and courts. Hence you see court interfering with court, and judge with judge—a perfect war of writs and counter-writs ; and what with the practical working of the law on jury-forming and on admissible evidence, the administration of justice is well-nigh reduced to a game of legal thimble-rigging between sharp lawyers. It is almost a bounty on crime, a proclamation of immunity to the criminal.

“No, sir, our way of making judges does not work well; it will go on to work worse and worse; and justice will never have free course until the people become wise enough to put good and fit men upon the bench without regard to party politics, and to make them independent of the popular favor for their continuance there.

"Of which there is small hope.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

SOMETHING ON UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE AND SACRED RIGHTS-WHEREIN IS SEEN DOW PROFESSOR CLARE AND PELHAM BRIEF DIFFER FROM EACH OTHER, AND THE DOCTOR FROM THEM BOTH.

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"How many persons among us," said the Doctor, after a pause, talk as if all rights were sacred-almost the only sacred things in the universe, and political rights the most sacred, and the exercise of them the chief end of man.

"There's my friend Pelham Brief-I tried the other day to make him comprehend the difference between a right resting merely in prescription, and a right grounded in natural justice."

"Yet Brief is a man of genius," said Professor Clare.

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"Yes," replied the Doctor, "Brief is a man of genius-in his way. He has a truly creative imagination; and he has withal a fancy so rich and bright, a taste so pure and delicate, and so exquisite

a faculty of expression, that I reckon him one of our most charming writers. But there are a good many sorts of genius. Plato was a man of genius. Brief has not the same sort of genius Plato had, any more than he probably has the genius of Cæsar, or Richelieu, or George Stephenson. He is a man of genius in the poetic sphere, in the world of fine letters; but not in the world of thought. He has no eminent faculty for science, analysis, logical connection, theoretic insight, or higher speculation. He doesn't seize at a glance the principles that underlie and connect political doctrines, and determine the truth or falsehood of theories on human rights. He cannot see but the right of suffrage— because it is called a right--must of necessity be a sacred right, belonging therefore to every human being, as much as the right of life and liberty, and consequently to deprive any person of it, unless it be forfeited by crime, is a moral wrong, or, as the political orators say, an atrocious violation of the sacred principles of eternal justice."

"But I agree with Brief," said Professor Clare. go for universal suffrage."

"What do you mean by universal ?

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Why, all the people voting, of course." "Negroes ? "

"Hem-no, I did not mean them."

"Women?'

"No-I don't go for that."

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Ah, by universal then you mean all the white men! A droll idea of universal!

And a still droller idea of a sacred right-one which the largest number of full-grown persons in the State may be-and probably are-excluded from!

should not negroes and women vote ? "

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But why

Oh, it would not do," the Professor said.

"But they are human persons," insisted the Doctor," and as virtuous and intelligent, and as capable of voting uprightly and wisely, as the great mass of the voters in general, and of our Irish and German citizens in particular."

"But it would not work well," replied the Professor.

"But who is to decide that question?" said the Doctor.

"The majority of the people, of course," was the Professor's answer.

"The majority of male white people, you

mean ? "

"Yes."

"But don't you see," said the Doctor, "if you allow the majority may justly make one restriction

to-day, they may make another to-morrow-may exclude, for instance, all but native-born citizens, or all who are not freeholders, or all such grayhaired old fellows as I am;-in short, don't you see your boasted right of universal suffrage resolves itself at last into the right of a majority-it may be a majority of one-to deprive everybody else of a right you set out with assuming to be sacred, and claiming should on that account be universal ?

"Besides consider how droll it is to call that a sacred right which you yet make depend for its rightful existence on the opinion of a majority as to the expediency of allowing it. Is that the tenure by which you and I hold our right to live and to dispose of ourselves? Should we not say to any majority that proposed to grant us the right to life and to self-ownership: Thank you for nothing;our right to these things is anterior to your grant and independent of it-something you can indeed recognize, something you are bound to protect, and which, within the limits of justice and for good ends, you may regulate the exercise of, but which you cannot give, nor (unless forfeited by crime) take away, except by unjust force? Does it not seem to you to be thus in respect to life and liberty?"