sibly devise. And if we fail to get it perfectly reposed in one effort, we are at perfect liberty to try any number of repeated efforts until it can be reposed more perfectly and wisely than any where else. In this, I repeat, consists the only true superiority of our system of government over all others. Why do we so neglect to avail ourselves of this invaluable privilege; why so timid to even attempt its exercise; and why should we so persistently adopt that merely sodden, selfish and not wise boast of monarchists that that which is, respecting government, is better than that which can be? It is no more true nor correct in regard to the constitution of government than it is in regard to mechanics, or in regard to any other science. It does not appear to be true in regard to anything even relating to human nature itself, much less to its mere government. Before pointing out in detail some manifestations of the danger and of the thoughtlessness of our present supreme Constitutional Legislature, let us glance for one moment at the way legislation is performed in the monarchy of England, after whose system for legislation ours was attempted to be modeled.

After the House of Lords our Senates were formed. In England they place the services of their Senators entirely upon honor. They pay in nothing but honor and respect for all the services of those Senators who devote their lives to the service of the State. And because they pay them nothing and find them ready and willing to serve on condition that their office and service shall rest only as a service upon honor, the State finds that with the mere compensation of empty honor," it is easy to secure all the life-long services of her Senators. They do not confine that service to the old hereditary nobility, for they have found from experience that, a hereditary nobility is not to be safely entirely depended upon. They are, therefore, continually adding, and often largely, to their Senators for life, or during good behavior such numbers of private citizens (and frequently those who have risen from the humblest families in the country), as the best good of the State may seem to require. Suppose they do call them "Nobles," or "Lords," or "Counts," or "Marquises," it might be cheap even to call them Fiddlesticks, if upon that condition they would be willing to serve their country faithfully. The most humble, the most kind, the most truly polite, the most free from affectation, impudence, and snobbery; and from ignorant pretention and impertinent presumption of all the citizenship of England, as a rule, are their "nobles," and especially those who have lived long enough in this strange and unsatisfactory existence, to know something of the littleness and the wretched vanities inseparable from poor human nature, be it placed in whatsoever conditions, or offices, or

dignities of society it may. Our fathers tried to secure something of this sort of cheap compensation for public service, by calling their presidents and governors "Excellencies;" their senators, judges, and legislators "Honorables." But now, and in our free country, and under our boasted privileges, we see all our public service paid for, and all our public servants the most liberally rewarded by abuse and vilification. Does anybody in the country, possessed of any intelligence at all, even imagine it possible that our present state of things is desirable, or capable of being long continued? Or that, by any possibility, it is capable of securing for the services of our country the devotion of its most honest and upright citizens? What do we desire? What are we trying to do? Have we got foreign hirelings amongst us who are in the secret pay of monarchists to cry down everything, and drag down everybody in our country, who is even assuming the appearance of honor or respectability, the instant he shall accept office? Or is it we ourselves who are trying to drag everything down, and to do our utmost to bring republican government into such utter degredation that all that is respectable in the land shall be finally compelled to unite against it, and crush self-government once more from existence, as it always has been finally crushed out in all the former ages of the world?

We want no hereditary nobility, nor hereditary honors of any kind, for there are no honors fit to be called honors, except those which are earned. But because we should oppose all birth-made honors, is that any reason we should oppose all that is honorable? Is that any reason we should actually seek to drag down every public servant of the country into dishonor? Does not every intelligent elector see that such a system must end in our becoming confined to that public service which is ignorant, low-minded, and truly regardless of honor and of reputation? And after that ?——

Look around you, my countrymen. You now not only justify, but you actually excuse, if you do not actually require men to seek office, even if they would like to serve their country unselfishly. And not only that, you actually give the preference frequently to those very persons who seek office with the greatest pertinacity, and sometimes even with the use of means you cannot justify, and which no truly honorable mind could descend to. You even suffer pecuniary means to be adopted to get nominations and secure elections, and even without a constitutional provision that all and every act in favor of office so attained shall be absolutely void, and without redress, and that every office obtained by the use of any money either in securing a nomination or an election, shall be deemed, held and adjudged not to have been attained at all. A provision like this is now aimed at in Great

Britain. We could provide for it better in America. In my allusions to England, it must not be even imagined that I want her system of government at all. I want nothing of the kind, but something far better. I want a purely American system of Republican Government, a thing we have not yet had, nor even made an earnest effort to acquire.

I have referred to the British House of Lords, after which our fathers copied our Senates. I beg to direct your recollection now, for a moment, to their House of Commons, after which our systems of Assemblies were modeled. By the English Constitution, the electors may send any voter they please to the Lower House of Parliament, just as by our Constitution we may do also. But their House of Commons is so constitutionally organized that all vicious or incompetent members of it are rendered practically harmless. They never even dream of such a thing as attempting to make laws over the country, as we do. When its Legislature is not in session, the chosen and selected leaders of the party in the majority in the House of Commons at the time, carefully consider, mature, and prepare, beforehand, all the legislation agreed to be requisite and really important for the next session. When Parliament is convened for business, the House of Commons finds provided for its use, besides the convenient committee rooms, only a little chamber into which all its members cannot get, and in which only about one half of them can find seats! All the members elected to the House of Commons could not sit down in the place, because it is not and never has been large enough to hold them. All the leaders of the party in power have seats, and are expected to always and promptly occupy them. So have all the leaders of the party (and cliques) opposed to them. And there are also seats for, perhaps, a fair majority of all the members, but no more. There would be no use in anybody introducing a Bill without the consent of the leaders of the party in power, because they alone possess, and are expected to exercise, the power of exclusive control over all the legislation of the session, and they are held strictly responsible and accountable for it to the country. Consequently, as a rule, no measures of legislation are acted upon except those which the party in power has previously fully considered, prepared, and determined to undertake, and when well knowing beforehand that they will lose power the moment any measure they propose shall be decided to be erroneous or unwise, or shall be voted down. The great mass of members go up to London to have a good time, and to stand by their party, (those who have one, and there are but few, generally, who have none,) whenever a test vote comes on. We too often have the silliness to suppose that because we elect a man to

the Legislature "he must do something," and therefore many a poor, good, honest fellow, tries to do something, and sometimes is only too successful; and then we blame him. But even in monarchical England, nobody is even imagined to be a statesman, or is at all expected to perform any of the labors required of statesmen, until after he first studies long enough and hard enough to become one. No man is even suspected of being a statesman merely because he is a member of Parliament, nor is any member of Parliament treated so unjustly as to be supposed capable of attempting to perform legislation for the country, when it is well known he is not a statesman, nor a leader, and that his education has not thoroughly fitted him for any such great and, for the country, most serious and responsible undertaking. In proportion to their numbers, we need make no doubt at all, there is quite as much incompetency and dishonesty in Parliament, as in any American Legislature. But they are not spoken of as knaves, fools, or selfish schemers, because even if some of them be of that quality of little people, they rarely find any opportunity for the exercise of their quality; because it is rendered practically impossible for them to undertake, or to control any measure of legislation. And all members of Parliament, except those who are leaders, or are in training to become so-not by "management," for all that sort of thing is only ridiculed—but by laborious, earnest, and long-continued intellectual labor and high character. Usually, a man cannot become a leader of his party, nor enjoy the credit of being a statesman, under ten to twenty, and even thirty years, of constant legislative service, As a rule, their leading statesmen are from fifty to seventy-five years of age, or over.

And the entire service in the House of Commons, as in the Lords, is made purely and only a service of honor. No money at all is offered or thought of being offered to the men who are chosen to stand in the place of the people of the State in the performance of their supremest acts of government. The honor of being a member of the Supreme Tribunal of the land, is all that is asked or given for any man's service in the performance of legislative duties, either in Parliament or in any local government in any place in the entire country. Do they love their country any more sincerely than we love ours? Have we no pride, have we no preference for liberty? Have we not the intelligence to see that true republican government can be made superior in every particular to theirs and to any other? Shall we not arouse ourselves and determine to unitedly and earnestly devote ourselves to our country, until we shall present here in California, the most honest, the most noble, the most secure, the most free, and the most admirable government existing on the face of the round world? Would it

not be the proudest and nobles thing we can do? We can do it. We can do it easily, if we will only unitedly resolve that it shall be done. For, Californians are not made of the stuff that fails, if they only once resolutely determine that a thing shall be done, which they have the right to do and the ability to do, and which they shall all agree is really what they ought to do. They are but idle, or cowardly, or merely useless citizens, who hesitate to undertake whatsoever they see and know that the honor of their State demands they should at least attempt to do. Let us try. And even if we should fail it would be a "noble failure."

OUR LEGISLATURE.

But let us now hasten to a brief consideration of how we are trying at present to legislate, and the kind of constitutional contrivance we now possess for the performance of that highest duty in government. You all know its organization well enough to require no details. I will confine myself to pointing out the practical results of but one feature in the enormity of the contrivance, by reference to its practical operations at the very last session it held (only a sample of all the others which have been held,) when three parties were in control of it, and the new party (in search of official "purity" as of itself capable of removing all our reasonable complaints,) were in control (I am told) of the Assembly and was also in control of the Executive branch of the legislative power. By reference to a few of the results of our legislative efforts, it will be made sufficiently clear that our Constitution, whilst it insures that only erring mortals can become members of the Legislature, attempts to compel them-without requiring any previous preparation or the presence of any experienced leadership-to perform the accumulating two years legislation for this vast State in a time (probably) too short to enable it to be properly performed under the same constitutional plan by one hundred and forty experienced statesmen, or even by one hundred and forty experienced angels from heaven. It is really difficult to comprehend how a Legislature could be intelligently contrived to render it more certain that proper legislation cannot possibly be performed. Our very Constitution itself places no confidence in the Legislature it compels the people to obey, and to pay for-in more ways than one. The present Constitution compels the people to trust to it and to obey all its acts, whilst it remains itself so suspicious of it, that it actually prorogues it, before it permits it to assemble. And if the intelligent mode of seeking redress from its injuries consisted in lessening its opportunities for their infliction, then (upon that principle of intelligent" reform,") it should not merely have made its meetings