redeeming itself and us from that disgrace, and the government of American cities to-day is in the main far superior to the government of American states.

I challenge contradiction to that statement. How has it been reached? How have our cities been lifted up from the low grade of incompetency and corruption on which they stood when the "American Commonwealth" was written? It has been done by applying the principles of this bill to city government, by giving power to men elected by the people to do the things for which they were elected. But I say it is quite plain that that is not all. It is not all.

I am going to discuss a subject now that goes back to the beginning of the political life of the oldest man in this convention, and one to which we cannot close our eyes if we keep the obligations of our oath. We talk about the government of the constitution. We have spent many days in discussing the powers of this and that and the other officer.

What is the government of this state? What has it been during the forty years of my acquaintance with it? The government of the constitution? Oh, no; not half the time, nor half way.

When I ask what did the people find wrong in our state government, my mind goes back to those periodic fits of public rage in which the people rouse up and tear down the political leader, first of one party and then of the other party. It goes back to the public feeling of resentment against the control of party organizations, of both parties and of all parties.

Now, I treat this subject in my own mind not as a personal question to any man. I am talking about the system. From the days of Fenton and Conkling and Arthur and Cornell and Platt, from the days of David B. Hill, down to the present time, the government of the state has presented two different lines of activity, one of the constitutional and statutory officers of the state and the other of the party leaders. They call them party bosses.

They call the system-I do not coin the phrase-I adopt it, because it carries its own meaning-the system they call "invisible government." For I do not remember how many years, Mr. Conkling was the supreme ruler in this state; the governor did not count; the legislatures did not count; comptrollers and secretaries of state and what not did not count. It was what Mr. Conkling said, and in a great outburst of public rage. he was pulled down.

Then Mr. Platt ruled the state-for nigh upon twenty years he ruled it-it was not the governor, it was not the legislature, it was not any elected officer, it was Mr. Platt. And the capitol was not here; it was at 49 Broadway, with Mr. Platt and his lieutenants.

It makes no difference what name you give, whether you call it Fenton or Conkling or Cornell or Arthur or Platt, or by the names of men now living. The ruler of the state during the greater part of the forty years of my acquaintance with the state government has not been any man authorized by the constitution or by the law, and, sir, there is throughout the length and breadth of this state a deep and sullen and long-continued resentment at being governed thus by men not of the people's choosing.

The party leader is elected by no one, accountable to no one, bound by no oath of office, removable by no one. Ah! My friends here have talked about this bill's creating an autocracy. The word points with admirable facility to the very opposite reason for the bill. It is to destroy autocracy and restore power so far as may be to the men elected by the people, accountable to the people, removable by the people.

I don't criticize the men of the invisible government. How can I? I have known them all and among them have been some of my dearest friends. I can never forget the deep sense of indignation that I felt in the abuse that was heaped upon Chester A. Arthur, whom I honored and loved, when he was attacked because he held the position of political leader. But it is all wrong. It is all wrong that a government not authorized by the people should be continued superior to the government that is authorized by the people.

How is it accomplished? How is it done? Mr. Chairman, it is done by the use of patronage, and the patronage that my friends on the other side of this question have been arguing and pleading for in this convention is the power to continue that invisible government against that authorized by the people. Everywhere, sir, that these two systems of government coexist there is a conflict day by day and year by year between two principles of appointment to office, two radically opposed principles.

The elected officer, or the appointed officer, the lawful officer, who is to be held responsible for the administration of his office, desires to get men into the different positions of his office who will do their work in a way that is creditable to him and his administration.

Whether it be a president appointing a judge, or a governor appointing a superintendent of public works, whatever it may be, the officer wants to make a success and he wants to get the man selected upon the ground of his ability to do the work.

How is it about the boss? What does the boss have to do? He has to urge the appointment of a man whose appointment will consolidate his power and preserve the organization. The "invisible government" proceeds to build up and maintain its power by a reversal of the fundamental principle of good government, which is that men should be se

lected to perform the duties of the office, and to substitute the idea that the men should be appointed to office for the preservation and enhancement in power of the political leaders. The one, the true one, looks upon appointment to office with a view to the service that can be given to the public. The other, the false one, looks upon appointment to office with a view to what can be gotten out of it.

Gentlemen of the Convention, I appeal to your knowledge of facts. Every one of you knows what I say about the use of patronage under the system of "invisible government" is true. Louis Marshall told us the other day about the appointment of wardens in the Adirondacks-hotel keepers and people living there-to render no service whatever. They were appointed not for the service that they were to render to the state; they were appointed for the service they were to render to promote the power of a political organization.

Mr. Chairman, we all know that the halls of this capitol swarm with men during the session of the legislature on payday. A great number, seldom here, rendering no service, are on the payrolls as a matter of patronage, not of service, but of party patronage. Both parties are alike. All parties are alike. The system extends through all.

Ah, Mr. Chairman, that system finds its opportunity in the division. of powers, in a six-headed executive, in which, by the natural workings of human nature, there shall be opposition and discord and the playing of one force against the other, and so when we refuse to make one governor, elected by the people, the real chief executive, we make inevitable the setting up of a chief executive not selected by the people, not acting for the people's interest, but for the selfish interest of the few who control the party, whichever party it may be.

Think for a moment of what this patronage system means. How many of you are there who would be willing to do your private client, or customer, or any private trust, or to a friend or neighbor, what you see being done to the state of New York every year of your lives in the taking of money out of her treasury without service?

We can, when we are in a private station, pass on without much-attention to inveterate abuses. We can say to ourselves, "I know it is wrong. I wish it could be set right, it cannot be set right. I will do nothing." But here, here, we face the duty, we cannot escape it. We are bound to do our work, face to face, in clear recognition of the truth, unpalatable, deplorable as it may be, and the truth is that what the unerring instinct of the democracy of our state has seen in this government is that a different standard of mora'ity is applied to the conduct of affairs of state than that which is applied in private affairs.

I have been told forty times since this convention met that you can't

change it. We can try, can we not? I deny that we cannot change it. I repel that cynical assumption which is born of the lethargy that comes from poisoned air all these years.

I assert that this perversion of democracy, this robbing democracy of its virility, can be changed as truly as the system under which Walpole governed the commons of England, by bribery, as truly as the atmosphere. which made the credit mobilier scandal possible in the congress of the United States has been blown away by the force of public opinion.

We cannot change it in a moment, but we can do our share. We can take this one step toward not robbing the people of their part in government, but toward robbing an irresponsible autocracy of its indefensible and unjust and undemocratc control of government and restoring it to the people to be exercised by the men of their choice and their control. Mr. Chairman, this convention is a great event in the life of every man in this room. A body which sits but once in twenty years to deal with the fundamental law of the state deals not only for the present, but for the future, not only by its results, but by its example. Opportunity knocks at the door of every man in this assemblage, an opportunity which will never come again to most of us.

While millions of men are fighting and dying for their countries across the ocean, while government is become serious, sober, almost alarming in its effect upon the happiness of the lives of all that are dearest to us, it is our inestimable privilege to do something here in moving our beloved state along the pathway toward better and purer government, a more pervasive morality and a more effective exercise of the powers of government which preserve the liberty of the people.

When you go back to your homes and recall the record of the summer, you will find in it cause for your children and your children's children, who will review the convention of 1915 as we have been reviewing the work of the preceding convention, to say, "My father, my grandfather, helped to do this work for our state."

Mr. Chairman, there is a plain old house in the Oneida hills, overlooking the valley of the Mohawk, where truth and honor dwelt in my youth. When I go back, as I am about to go, to spend my declining years, I mean to go with the feeling that I have not failed to speak and to act here in accordance with the lessons I learned there from the God of my fathers. God grant that this opportunity for service to our country and our state may not be neglected by any of the men for whom I feel so deep friendship in this convention.

(Delivered in the House of Representatives, January 27, 1871, on the St. Croix and Bayfield Railroad Bill.)

MR. SPEAKER:-If I could be actuated by any conceivable inducement to betray the sacred trust reposed in me by those to whose generous confidence I am indebted for the honor of a seat on this floor; if I could be influenced by any possible consideration to become instrumental in giving away, in violation of their known wishes, any portion of their interest in the public domain for the mere promotion of any railroad enterprise whatever, I should certainly feel a strong inclination to give this measure my most earnest and hearty support; for I am assured that its success would materially enhance the pecuniary prosperity of the most valued friends I have on earth-friends for whose accommodation I would be willing to make almost any sacrifice not involving my personal honor, or my fidelity as the trustee of an express trust. And that fact of itself would be sufficient to countervail almost any objection I might entertain to the passage of this bill, not inspired by an imperative and inexorable sense of public duty.

But, independent of the seductive influences of private friendship, to which I admit I am, perhaps, as susceptible as any of the gentlemen I see around me, the intrinsic merits of the measure itself are of such an extraordinary character as to commend it most strongly to the favorable consideration of every member of this House-myself not excepted-notwithstanding my constituents, in whose behalf alone I am acting here, would not be benefited by its passage one particle more than they would be by a project to cultivate an orange grove on the bleakest summit of Greenland's icy mountains.

Now, sir, as to those great trunk lines of railway, spanning the continent from ocean to ocean, I confess my mind has never been fully made up. It is true they may afford some trifling advantages to local traffic, and they may even in time become the channels of a more extended commerce. Yet I have never been thoroughly satisfied either

JAMES PROCTOR KNOTT. Born at Lebanon, Ky., August 29, 1830; member of Congress in 1866-1870, 1875-1883; Governor of Kentucky, 1883 to 1887; Professor of Law and Dean of the Law Faculty of Center College, Kentucky, 1894-1901. Died June 18, 1911.