[Sidenote:  Dangers of a restricted suffrage.] It should also be borne in mind that, while ignorant and needy voters, led by unscrupulous demagogues, are capable of doing much harm with their votes, it is by no means clear that the evil would be removed by depriving them of the suffrage.  It is very unsafe to have in any community a large class of people who feel that political rights or privileges are withheld from them by other people who are their superiors in wealth or knowledge.  Such poor people are apt to have exaggerated ideas of what a vote can do; very likely they think it is because they do not have votes that they are poor; thus they are ready to entertain revolutionary or anarchical ideas, and are likely to be more dangerous material in the hands of demagogues than if they were allowed to vote.  Universal suffrage has its evils, but it undoubtedly acts as a safety-valve.  The only cure for the evils which come from ignorance and shiftlessness is the abolition of ignorance and shiftlessness; and this is slow work.  Church and school here find enough to keep them busy; but the vote itself, even if often misused, is a powerful educator; and we need not regret that the restriction of the suffrage has come to be practically impossible.

[Sidenote:  Baneful effects of mixing city politics with national politics.] The purification of our city governments will never be completed until they are entirely divorced from national party politics.  The connection opens a limitless field for “log-rolling,” and rivets upon cities the “spoils system,” which is always and everywhere incompatible with good government.  It is worthy of note that the degradation of so many English boroughs and cities during the Tudor and Stuart periods was chiefly due to the encroachment of national politics upon municipal politics.  Because the borough returned members to the House of Commons, it became worth while for the crown to intrigue with the municipal government, with the ultimate object of influencing parliamentary elections.  The melancholy history of the consequent dickering and dealing, jobbery and robbery, down to 1835, when the great Municipal Corporations Act swept it all away, may be read with profit by all Americans.[17] It was the city of London only, whose power and independence had kept it free from complications with national politics, that avoided the abuses elsewhere prevalent, so that it was excepted from the provisions of the Act of 1835, and still retains its ancient constitution.

[Footnote 17:  See Parliamentary Reports, 1835, “Municipal Corporations Commission;” also Sir Erskine May, Const.  Hist., vol. ii. chap, xv.]

In the United States the entanglement of municipal with national politics has begun to be regarded as mischievous and possibly dangerous, and attempts have in some cases been made toward checking it by changing the days of election, so that municipal officers may not be chosen at the same time with presidential electors.  Such a change is desirable, but to obtain a thoroughly satisfactory result, it will be necessary to destroy the “spoils system” root and branch, and to adopt effective measures of ballot reform.  To these topics I shall recur when treating of our national government.  But first we shall have to consider the development of our several states.