Of course, in this affirmation of belief that one hundred years of popular government in this country is a real progress for humanity, and not merely a change from the rule of the fit to the rule of the cunning, we cannot forget that men are pretty much everywhere the same, and that we have abundant reason for national humility.  We are pretty well aware that ours is not an ideal state of society, and should be so, even if the English who pass by did not revile us, wagging their heads.  We might differ with them about the causes of our disorders.  Doubtless, extended suffrage has produced certain results.  It seems, strangely enough, to have escaped the observation of our English friends that to suffrage was due the late horse disease.  No one can discover any other cause for it.  But there is a cause for the various phenomena of this period of shoddy, of inflated speculation, of disturbance of all values, social, moral, political, and material, quite sufficient in the light of history to account for them.  It is not suffrage; it is an irredeemable paper currency.  It has borne its usual fruit with us, and neither foreign nor home critics can shift the responsibility of it upon our system of government.  Yes, it is true, we have contrived to fill the world with our scandals of late.  I might refer to a loose commercial and political morality; to betrayals of popular trust in politics; to corruptions in legislatures and in corporations; to an abuse of power in the public press, which has hardly yet got itself adjusted to its sudden accession of enormous influence.  We complain of its injustice to individuals sometimes.  We might imagine that something like this would occur.

A newspaper one day says:  “We are exceedingly pained to hear that the Hon. Mr. Blank, who is running for Congress in the First District, has permitted his aged grandmother to go to the town poorhouse.  What renders this conduct inexplicable is the fact that Mr. Blank is a man of large fortune.”

The next day the newspaper says:  “The Hon. Mr. Blank has not seen fit to deny the damaging accusation in regard to the treatment of his grandmother.”

The next day the newspaper says:  “Mr. Blank is still silent.  He is probably aware that he cannot afford to rest under this grave charge.”

The next day the newspaper asks:  “Where’s Blank?  Has he fled?”

At last, goaded by these remarks, and most unfortunately for himself, Mr. Blank writes to the newspaper and most indignantly denies the charge; he never sent his grandmother to the poorhouse.

Thereupon the newspaper says:  “Of course a rich man who would put his own grandmother in the poorhouse would deny it.  Our informant was a gentleman of character.  Mr. Blank rests the matter on his unsupported word.  It is a question of veracity.”

Or, perhaps, Mr. Blank, more unfortunately for himself, begins by making an affidavit, wherein he swears that he never sent his grandmother to the poorhouse, and that, in point of fact, he has not any grandmother whatever.