In All Such Matters The
People Of The Nation Has Been Strangely Undemonstrative.
It has
been done as part of a system which has been used for transferring
the political power of the nation to a body of trading politicians
who have become known and felt as a mass, and not known and felt as
individuals.
I find it difficult to describe the present political
position of the States in this respect. The millions of the people
are eager for the Constitution, are proud of their power as a
nation, and are ambitious of national greatness. But they are not,
as I think, especially desirous of retaining political influences in
their own hands. At many of the elections it is difficult to induce
them to vote. They have among them a half-knowledge that politics
is a trade in the hands of the lawyers, and that they are the
capital by which those political tradesmen carry on their business.
These politicians are all lawyers. Politics and law go together as
naturally as the possession of land and the exercise of magisterial
powers do with us. It may be well that it should be so, as the
lawyers are the best-educated men of the country, and need not
necessarily be the most dishonest. Political power has come into
their hands, and it is for their purposes and by their influences
that the spread of democracy has been encouraged.
As regards the Senate, the recovery of its old dignity and former
position is within its own power.
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