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the Republican ticket, and the Republican candidate was elected; but to save myself from State's prison I could not tell you here to-night what the name of the candidate was, nor had I ever heard of him before. And in this connection two questions at once suggest themselves. How many others here are in the same case? Could one-half of those present give the names of their representatives in Congress? Or again, what obstacle would have sufficed to keep you from the polls, had an intelligent system of representation, no matter where he lived or where, you lived, enabled you at the last election to cast a vote which would have been counted in favor of Mr. Schurz? Under such a system there would have been no day during the last thirty years when he would have had to seek a constituency.
So it goes; and, as I think, not greatly to our credit. In this respect we are distinctly behind all other parliamentary nations, infinitely behind what we should be. We are wedded to very poor idols—provincialism, and the spirit of locality. The persons we elect to our parliamentary bodies—from the city councils to the members of Congress—represent territorial limits, within which they themselves reside; they do not, represent intelligent, self-constituted constituencies. And taking advantage of this occasion, I want further to call attention to the fact that this crude, clumsy, antiquated, and peculiarly American system of representation is at the root of that one of our political problems which, more than any or all others, is at once the most difficult of solution, and the source of our greatest disquiet. Here, in Greater New-York, I need scarcely say I refer to the rule of large cities through a
