people, I repeat it, are not to blame for its existence, but their leaders were the only ones in fault, who urged them into the adoption of this wholly needless expense, and worse than useless and unnecessary delay and inconvenience to the whole State. Judges cannot be chosen from the people. They must be chosen from the lawyers; and they should be invariably the best men and the brightest, ablest, and wisest lawyers to be found at the bar. What the people want is the best possible means to insure the accomplishment of that result. They know as well as any lawyer knows, that judges who preside in our courts of justice, must not be made of party men nor party leaders. They know they must not be mixed up with the partizan scramblings and guess-work results of partizan conventions; and that, whilst on the bench, they must not be kept in fear or favor of any party, nor of any party leader, nor of any men or set of men.

Every human being in the State, no matter who or where, is directly interested in having all the judges free from every power of wealth and of influence. The masses of the people cannot exercise personal influences, for they are composed of working men who are not politicians, and not men of wealth, nor usually men of the great personal influence which wealth bestows; and when their rights, or the rights of their families or relatives, or of their little properties or little claims, require the attention of the Courts, they ought not to be kept in danger, as under the present system they are kept in danger, that, if their opponent be a man of great wealth or great political influence, he is more likely to defeat them than they are to defeat him.

No system could be devised so dangerous to the masses of the people, so demoralizing to the minds of judges, and so utterly destitute of any one good purpose whatsoever, and so needlessly expensive and troublesome, as to make judges on the bench politicians, or to force them into subjection to politicians and political influences, by compelling them to remain in subjection to party elections in order to get on the bench or to be able to remain there. Nothing but the little minds of little leaders has ever attempted to justify so needless a danger, or excuse such a useless burden and expense and injustice upon the people.

Charles O'Conor, the great lawyer of New York, was in the Constitutional Convention of New York, of 1846, which first introduced this scandalous outrage upon the people, and led to the infamous court proceedings of the city of New York, which disgraced our country in our own eyes, and much more in the eyes of all foreign countries. Mr. O'Conor predicted in the Convention what afterwards followed from making political judges; and in consequence of that attempt, by that Convention, to deprive the people of courts

free from all temptations to bias, he voted against the entire Constitution which they had spent months to improve. That the intelligent people of California place a correct estimate on this attempted means to give unfair favors to the rich and the influential, and the scheming, and that they disapprove of it altogether, is manifest at every judicial election ever held in this State. Not one half of them now go to the polls and vote at such needless, injurious and wholly unprincipled elections. In place of so bad and so expensive a system, I would recommend a more secure and more calm and inquiring selection to be made among the lawyers than any party Convention, or other hasty and scrambling Convention can exercise; whilst, at the same time, it should insure a higher standard of judicial impartiality, and render it more certain that the humblest individual in the land will receive equal attention with the most rich or influential who can ever be found.

NEW SYSTEM OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS.

I have also managed to prepare what I sincerely believe would be a far more dignified, useful, and efficient, and at the same time more simple, more economical and more secure system of local governments for all our towns, villages, cities and counties. The plan admits all the probably ablest and best men of counties being openly heard in the county governments (under all needful securities against pretencious intrusion), respecting any improvement or new measure devised by themselves, and found to be for the public good. And this privilege I would have secured as a right to every good citizen who has learned how to be of service to his county, and has been of service to it, whether he holds any merely official position in it or not. All these and more than a dozen more important improvements in our Constitution which I have devised, and which could easily be perfected and made safe and useful by a Constitutional Convention, or entirely other, different and better ones substituted in their places, render it with me a matter of certainty, that we can adopt an incomparably better Constitution than the one we now have, if we will only earnestly try to do so, in the only way provided by our existing Contion for such a momentous undertaking, and not by the unjust, if not preposterous means of attempting to do so in our Legislature, which, as I shall now endeavor to prove, itself requires a thorough and entire reformation.

A NEW KIND OF STATE LEGISLATURE.

During my twenty years' studies, devoted to the examination of our own systems of government (including the six years' studies and

personal inspections devoted to these abroad), I have at last managed to devise an entirely new and simple system for making laws for the State, which, I am satisfied, will no sooner be well explained and understood than it will meet the approbation of the people. This new device I consider the most material and valuable improvement which I have been able to hit upon, and which, when perfected by the help of others, can be, I am certain, made most useful. To explain the plan could be easily done in a few sentences. But to merely present the plan without first preparing the minds of the observers to see clearly and comprehend at once all the advantages it would secure for us, would be no less unjust to the observers than it would be to the inventor. And as that proper preparatory explanation alone would require three or four or more lectures or addresses of equal length with this, it is not possible to justly attempt any explanation of it before the present election. Besides, my present object (as already stated), is merely to convince every elector that the Constitutional Convention must be called, if we desire an improved government. I may say this, however: The plan I would recommend presupposes that the reason why we now see so little manifestation of patriotism in our country is not because we are worse than other nations, and have no patriotism, but because our present Constitution is so completely mercenary that it leaves no place nor chance for its visible exhibition or its pure and genuine exercise. Even the right to vote at elections is permitted to thieves and to the vilest rogues and to their habitual associates, as freely as it is permitted to the hard-working and the honest, from the humblest up to the ministers of Christ, and the judges on the bench. Whilst universal suffrage should never be surrendered, nor in the slightest degree impaired, yet it is deeply to the interest of every honest elector to have the right made into something valuable and dear to him, and have it made a real privilege, and not have it left degraded, as it is in England, into a mere indiscriminate and indistinguishable hustling of concealed paper ballots secretly placed in boxes by almost anybody and everybody a few days or weeks or months, in the country; and to be thus secretly exercised as though the American laboring man was a coward, or felt obliged to be afraid of somebody or something, any more than the richest or most potent citizen in the State.

And not only does our present Constitution leave the franchise in mere servile imitation of the franchise in England, and thus impair the value and lessen the dignity and greatness of the privilege from that high and noble and controlling power which it was intended by our fathers to accomplish in behalf of the liberties of Americans, but we also find it now frittered away, and not made by the Constitution

what it ought to be in practice. Do the people select their rulers now? No; in practical fact they are compelled now to confine their choice to only such persons as hurried and scrambling and selfish, or wise, disinterested and discreet party leaders or no party leaders, may choose to set up. Practically, and in full effect, I would have the people left free to make their own selections for their offices, and by a wiser, safer and more secure plan of nominations, previously and deliberately and with little chance of mistakes, effected by themselves, or by their own direct agency, and in spite of all intermeddlers and marplotters of every and any description. In fact, it seems to me that the greatest and noblest boast in favor of a government of the people is that the people are free to always improve it and make it better and better from age to age, and in full progression with their own improvement, and as they become more and more advanced in the dignity, moral nobility and intellectual greatness of their citizenship. In monarchical governments, no such advancement in government is possible, because the nests of the monarchs, young and old, and of their chosen favorites, demand and compel favoritisms in the State which neither God nor Nature, nor God's justice, nor man's justice either justifies, excuses or renders necessary. In republics it is disgraceful to make no advancement in government whenever it fails to accomplish the true and only natural design and object of government; that is, not merely to put this man up or that man down, this man into an office and that man out of an office (for that is usually but a trifling and often but a selfish purpose), but to so manage as to secure the greatest good possible to the whole people of the State, without any distinction as to whether they vote with a majority or with a minority; for every distinction of every kind, except only the distinction between the good and the bad, is not recognized by nature nor by justice, and therefore never should be by government. But under our present State Constitution, nothing can be done for our country, excepting only by the men who will first get into office, and who must then continue in the position of hirelings, and be paid for their services. Even the pretense of serving the country from the noble and honest and common motives of patriotism, is by our Constitution practically scouted at, and no service is provided for under it, and no opportunity for serving under it, is even permitted, excepting only by those who are to be paid for their services. No such exclusive confinement of the whole service of the country to this one kind of merely mercenary service, is even tolerated in the worst of the monarchies. In a republic, it is not only disgraceful, but it inflicts a needless amount of burdens upon the country, and a needless deprivation of the people from purely patriotic service. If any one

should even try to do anything disinterestedly for his country, under our present state of things, he would be likely to hear or see this horrid query: "Well, what does he want? What is he after?" He would be quite likely to subject himself to being suspected of belonging to, if not accused of being among those men of little minds, little ambitions, and trifling desires, who cannot even comprehend the things which are more important to themselves than themselves.

The plan I would advise recognizes the fact, that neither all the wisdom, nor all the patriotism of the State, ever is, ever has been, or ever can be confined to those only who are merely elected to office, and hired and paid for their employment. The plan even admits the presumption that frequently the most devoted, and the most sincere, and often the most valuable services which the State could obtain and enjoy, are these which are frequently ready to be freely and patriotically offered, but which no mere vanity of holding or scrambling for office could ever secure, and no mere money ever pay for. Pay for? Can a mother's love be paid for? Can a true man's love of his country be paid for?

The plan I have devised would enable all of us to rise up and exalt our ambitions to higher aims than mere contests and quarrels after office. And by the shere force of not only the earnest and faithful, but also the competent, intelligent and useful service of the people any citizen could secure a public estimation, and a real and lasting fame which no mere office can bestow, and which no election, nor want of election could effect. It would tend to educate the real Californians, already coming towards us to take our places, into a greater and better citizenship for the magnificent State we have founded, than our present tendencies can ever supply. Whilst it would greatly add to the pleasures, and take nothing from the dignity nor the usefulness of office, it would tend immeasurably to stimulate the improvement, elevate the character, and increase the value of our citizenship, and advance nearer and nearer towards greatness, the privilege of being an American.

PUBLIC DEFAMATION OF PRIVATE CHARACTER.

Amongst all thoughtful minds the true wealth of the State does not consist in the money, nor the property of its people, but in the goodness, and the honor, and the greatness of the characters of its citizens. Let no man suppose that either goodness, or honor, or greatness of character depends at all upon office, or upon the mere distinction in position in the State. It is as secure of enjoyment and as capable of being earned whilst swinging the cradle in the grain field, or the sledge in the shop, as whilst wielding its voice in the Courts or in the Senate.