OUR COPYING OF ENGLAND.
Our constitution and laws have nothing specifically American about them. They are copies from the English, modified in some particulars, which have been the inducement “to gather the spoils while we may.” The President is an English king under another name, selected by the “caucus,” the worst element in politics, and elected by the people, because, under the vicious methods that are in vogue they have no way to vote save for one of the two at whom ten thousand papers vie with each other in throwing mud during the campaign. Many who have come to know how Presidents are made have abandoned the polls in disgust. The Senate is a badly abridged edition of the House of Lords, while the House of Representatives is the same of the House of Commons. In the law of primogeniture only do our laws differ materially from those of England, this good feature having been borrowed from another source. Nor have we any political literature save the Declaration of Independence which has a distinct national character about it that is purely American, and it is this that we celebrate year after year; it is this and this only that calls out the patriotism of the people.
As far as the Constitution is concerned it is Dead Sea fruit. It is an old and musty English sermon to which we have prefixed a new and vital text, the text and sermon having no common ground or meaning. The condition of the people and the country could scarcely have been worse had we had Kings and Parliaments, instead of Presidents and Congresses. A tree, let it be called by whatever name, is known by the fruit it bears. If we are to judge the political tree in this country in this way, shall we not be forced to say that we have gathered thorns from grapes and thistles from figs? In purity in the administration of justice, our Government can stand no comparison with that of England. Money here is king, and judge and jury also. Then must there not be something radically wrong somewhere, and what can this be, except the engrafting of a new political idea into an old political system? This is what is the matter, and cringe as we may, there can never be a change greatly for the better until the institutions of the country are remodelled by the inspiration of that which led to their establishment.