a specimen of what, with a little practice, we shall come to in England.

This would be so but for three profound differences between the American political system and our own. The first lies in the great number of salaried officers (including memberships) given away by popular election. Hence it is worth while to have a complete machinery for the purpose of gaining these offices, whereas in England we have very few such places of emolument, promotion lying not with the people, but with some minister or some administrative body, and members of the legislature receiving no payment. The second lies in the fact that elections are very frequent. As the former cause made the machine so elaborate, this cause makes it so smooth, easy, and efficient in its working. It is kept constantly going. It is a mill to which grist is never lacking, because these numerous short-term offices and memberships are constantly becoming vacant; fresh elections are required; candidates have again to be brought out; the steam is always up, and the wheels always turning. But in England the Eight Hundred exists only for the purpose of choosing a candidate for Parliament, and this function it has to exercise only once (on an average) in five years, perhaps less frequently if the old members continue popular and offer themselves afresh. This Eight Hundred, in its executive committee, may be called together from time to time to pass resolutions condemning or approving the conduct of government, and calling on the representatives of the people to vote this way or that. But that is a harmless proceeding, very different from the kind of work which occupies an American assemblage of nominating delegates. tween a body whose function it is at intervals of several years to select candidates for an unpaid honor, and one which is always choosing them for a great variety of salaried places, there is surely all the difference in the world. The latter must have a power and significance in the country, an influence over the people, which the former cannot have. The third and last point of difference is quite the most important. My readers will have anticipated it. America there is a class of persons

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eagerly interested in working the machine, because their livelihood depends on it, viz. the civil service actual and potential, the office holders and the office-seekers. Whereas in England the civil service, consisting of permanent officials who are appointed by examination without reference to party, and hold office for life (if they properly perform their duties), has no personal interest whatever in politics or political agitation. What can make the contrast stronger than the fact that while in America the civil service have actually been taxed by their superiors for the support of the party funds, and are understood to be the people chiefly bound to look to the party organization, in England a wise custom forbids members of the civil service to take part in political meetings or canvass at elections. It is notorious that the sentiment of the official classes, and particularly of their upper ranks, is often opposed to the government in power. Thus in the United States there is not only a powerful machine, but plenty of people who are led to work it for their own selfish purposes by their own selfish motives. But in England no similar class exists. The men who summon our primaries and are chosen delegates and influence the councils of Eight Hundred, have nothing to gain by their activity, beyond, indeed, that amount of local notoriety and power which any kind of prominence secures. They are inspired, except so far as mere vanity may move them, by zeal for the principles of their party or attachment to its leaders, not one in a hundred having anything to gain by the completest party victory. In days of political peace and dulness these feelings languish, whereas in America the time when there are fervent questions to excite the whole community is just that at which the professional politician has to work hardest to get his voters together, and by their means secure the spoils for himself. It, therefore, appears that the machine which is dangerous in America because there is so much for it to do and so many persons interested in working it, has in England neither the interests nor the persons, and may therefore be, so far as the example of America goes (for it is only with that example that we are here

concerned), a perfectly harmless and indeed beneficial institution.

This would be less clearly the case if the sphere of the Birmingham system were to be extended far beyond its present function of choosing parliamentary candidates and occasionally meeting to discuss current topics. Were all municipal elections, for instance, and those of school boards and poor-law guardians to be brought within its scope, it would be a more potent, because a more frequently active, factor in our politics. I am myself one of those who regret the tendency, equally visible in both of our great parties, to drag all popular elections into the sphere of party politics and fight them on party lines, and who heartily hope that the temptation to win a momentary advantage by such means will be resisted. But, even if the authors of the Birmingham system had gone farther in this direction than they have yet done, their creation would remain a totally different thing from that American spectre with which we are threatened.

It would be wrong to leave the subject of the American civil service without reminding English readers that there have been during the last few years very earnest and continued efforts made for its reform and for the total abolition of the "spoils system. A European observer does not, when he first lands, fully appreciate the importance of the question, for it seems to him to concern only the efficiency of the officials. After a time he perceives that the wisest Americans are right in looking upon it as the source of some of the gravest defects in their government, and he learns to admire the disinterested zeal with which so many of the best men in the country are laboring to prove to the bulk of the people the necessity of letting appointments be made by merit, not by political favor, and for life or good behavior. They urge not merely that the work of the nation will be better done, but that the class of professional politicians will be almost extinguished, and a higher and purer tone given to political life altogether. The American people is so large, so busy, so hopeful, and on the whole so justly contented with the prosperity which it enjoys, that it takes some time to convince it of the necessity

and value of this reform, which the professional politicians of both parties, not venturing on open opposition, are trying to evade by minimizing the issues involved. But a steady progress is being made; Civil Service Reform Associations have been formed all over the Eastern States; lectures are constantly given on the subject and discussions raised both in Congress and in the press. Opinion in such a nation is not easily moved on a comparatively new question, but when moved it is irresistible, and the hour of success seems to be no longer distant.

This is an instance of a phenomenon in American life which I may not have sufficiently dwelt on. The higher politics of the country are not, like the lower, left mainly to the professional politicians. There is always a large number of able and thoughful men, who take no part in electioneering and hold no office, who are engaged in discussing matters of principle and enlightening their fellow-citizens upon them. There is thus formed a body of quiet and sober opinion which holds back the Congress or the persons in power from doing any serious mischief, and which, when things grow really serious, steps in to seize the helm. In 1871 New York was suddenly rescued, by the action of a few publicspirited men who had previously been outside politics," supported by the bulk of the respectable citizens, from the fangs of the Tammany Ring. Three years ago San Francisco was in like manner delivered from a similar gang. Everybody knows that this can be done again if a like emergency should arise, and everybody has, therefore, been comparatively indifferent, perhaps too indifferent, to the defects in the working of the ordinary machinery. But the indifference diminishes, and the number of able and earnest men who enter public life, especially as candidates for local offices, increases every year. The professionals strain every nerve to keep them out, and this is one of the main causes why they are still so few; but the mass of good citizens are less and less obedient to party dictation, more and more disposed to give their support to independent candidates.

Throughout the foregoing remarks I have intentionally described the worst

aspects of American politics, and taken my facts from those great Atlantic cities where the crowd of ignorant immigrants has put democratic institutions to the severest strain. It has been necessary

to do so, because it is from these cities that English critics of the United States have drawn their illustrations and their warnings; and my object has been to show that even taking such institutions

and particularly the Caucus systemwhere they are at their worst, the differences from England are so great that no inference directly applicable to ourselves can be drawn. America does indeed suggest considerations of practical value to Englishmen and Frenchmen and to all free countries. She bids us maintain the present arrangements of our civil service; she impresses upon all citizens the duty of interesting themselves in public affairs; she dissuades us from multiplying popular elections, or handing over to them such posts as judgeships; she reminds us that the spirit of party must not be suffered to extend its influence too widely and seize upon all elective bodies. But these, except perhaps the last, are not the rocks toward which we in England seem to be drifting.

If this article had been a sketch of American politics as a whole, there would have been many other matters to enlarge on. Some defects in the Constitution and in the mode of working it must have been pointed out; many merits would also have been set forth; and it would have been shown how even the faults are largely due to transitory influences, which may disappear when education tells upon the new and still incompetent citizens whom a too indulgent system admits at once to electoral power. I should have observed that the professional politicians, so often referred to above, are far less harmful through the country generally than in the populous maritime cities; in many parts of the interior they scarcely exist, and that even where they do, personal corruption is rare among them. The scandals of New York have done great injustice to the fair fame of local government in general. Taking the American political system as a whole, the shadows, regrettable as they are, are less conspicuous than the lights. If it is to be judged by its tendency to promote the welfare and

the other-would naturally hold respecting La Salette and Lourdes, St. Winifred's Well and St. Januarius' Blood, so as to have an answer ready for an assailant or an inquirer, and to be able if possible to turn the tables on the one and to satisfy the legitimate demands of the other. There are in existence abundant materials for the satisfaction of him who has a genuine desire to learn the truth respecting the existence of a miraculous power still energizing in the Church-abundant too for the complete discomfiture of him who comes forward with an ignorant assumption of superior wisdom, laughing to scorn one of the characteristic notes of that Church whose divine beauty he has not the virtue to love or the intelligence to appreciate.

ever. The doctrine of some Protestants that miracles took place in Apostolic times and perhaps for some centuries afterward, but that they gradually became less and less frequent, until at length they leased altogether, may or may not be a positive and explicit heresy. If they mean thereby to assert that the thaumaturgic power no longer exists in the Church, it is a heresy. If, however, they simply mean that the power exists, but, in point of fact, has never been exercised for the last 800 or 900 years, such a doctrine is not heretical, though false and scandalous, and inconsistent with clearly proved facts. It is perfectly true that miracles which were in primitive times of daily and hourly occurrence, diminished in frequency as time went on. This resulted partly from the diminution of the fervor of the early Christians, partly from the gradual disappearance of the occasion for miracles. Miracles were one of the most prominent instruments employed by Almighty God for the conversion of the world, or at all events of the civilized world, to Christianity. When the Church had been spread over the whole of the ancient world, those supernatural interferences in its favor were no longer needed as one of the most efficacious means to produce the desired end, and God manifested only here and there, once and again, his dominion over nature's laws. But he never withdrew altogether his wonder-working hand, and from time to time, as the faith of his saints invested them with divine. power, or as he in his omniscience saw fit to make known to men the gifts still abiding in his Church, the latent energy displayed itself in external activity. Up to the present day, now here, now there, the marvellous power of God breaks through the ordinary course of nature's laws. To deny that this power is still present is heresy; to deny that it is exercised deserves, as we shall now see, a lesser note of censure.

III.

What, then, is the position of one who should say that, while he believes that the Holy Spirit, ever present in his divine spouse, the Church of God, might if he saw fit, exert at any moment the miraculous gifts of Pente