Church and school here find
enough to keep them busy; but the vote itself, even if often misused,
is a powerful educator; and we need not regret that the restriction of
the suffrage has come to be practically impossible.
[Sidenote: Baneful effects of mixing city politics with national
politics.]
The purification of our city governments will never be completed
until they are entirely divorced from national party politics. The
connection opens a limitless field for "log-rolling," and rivets
upon cities the "spoils system," which is always and everywhere
incompatible with good government. It is worthy of note that the
degradation of so many English boroughs and cities during the Tudor
and Stuart periods was chiefly due to the encroachment of national
politics upon municipal politics. Because the borough returned members
to the House of Commons, it became worth while for the crown to
intrigue with the municipal government, with the ultimate object of
influencing parliamentary elections. The melancholy history of the
consequent dickering and dealing, jobbery and robbery, down to 1835,
when the great Municipal Corporations Act swept it all away, may be
read with profit by all Americans.
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