In other words, the corrupt Senator is simply the fruit of the tree of legislative corruption, and the corrupt Legislature has been too often the result of corrupt elections.
We might as well tell the truth, and the whole truth, while we are discussing the question. Every one of us knows that elections of almost every sort, from the highest to the lowest—town, county, state and national—have been influenced by money and whisky, fraudulent practices of all sorts, the stuffed ballot-box, the doctored returns, and the God’s truth about the matter is that the people themselves are, to a large extent, responsible for the kind of men who get into the Legislature, into the House of Representatives and into the Senate.
Too many of our honest men have shirked election duty, as they have shirked jury duty; and just as ignorant or corrupt juries too often decide questions in the court house, so the ignorant or corrupt voters—pliant tools in the hands of unscrupulous politicians—decide questions of legislation which require the best thought and the best energies of our most intelligent and upright citizens.
If direct legislation and the Recall should be put in practice, there could not be such things as corrupt legislatures, and therefore there would be no such thing as corrupt senatorial elections.
The fountain having been purified, the stream would be pure. At present the fountain itself is too often impure, and therefore the stream which flows from it cannot be pure.
On the other two points made by Mr. Adams there will be greater difference of opinion. His objections proceed upon the assumption that the United States is a nation with a government national in all particulars. Here he is at fault.
Our Government is only partially national. It is Federal, also, in part. It is not altogether the one nor altogether the other.
Ours is a peculiar system. To the foreign world we present the aspect of a sovereign nation. Among ourselves we are a collection of sovereign states which, for purposes stated in the preamble of the Constitution, have delegated to the central Government a portion of those powers which once belonged entirely to those sovereign states.
The state government existed before the Federal Government came into being. If the Federal Government were abolished tomorrow, each one of the states would still remain a sovereign state capable of conducting government.