All corrupt practices laws in this republic go back to the English corrupt practices prevention law of 1883 as the source of their inspiration and the ideal standard by which they should be measured. It was passed in Mr. Gladstone's second ministry, has been tested in five fiercely contested elections, and will be tested again next month in the great struggle at the polls on the eve of which England now stands.

So far as a foreigner can judge, it is a permanent bulwark in the English constitution. The same is true of the Dominion of Canada. That lusty colony which lies between us and the North Pole followed the mother country, in 1884, with the enactment of a very close counterpart of the English law, which has been rigidly enforced.

In the United States the record is a sadly different one. There neither is, nor has been, any federal law like the Dominion statute of Canada, while the few state laws, both in theory and practice, fall far short of similar laws of the British provinces of America.

In speaking of corrupt practices laws I adopt the definition of the New York state library, which includes all laws requiring candidates or committees to file a sworn statement of election expenses.

At a certain period of our development liberty came to mean freedom from restraint by the State for the reason that the State, administered by arbitrary rulers, was, and had been an oppressor. Omnipresent and manifest in the person of its officials, the State came to be looked upon as the principal, if not the sole oppressor. At that juncture it was highly important to takeastand against State interference in order to correct abuses. But when this was accomplished the fight for liberty was by no means won; only the first stage of it was won. The struggle has now to be directed against certain institutions or customs which give to corporations and individuals the power to oppress others. Under an autocracy this struggle is difficult. But when the State has been won over to the side of the people, and is administered by and for the people, it at once becomes possible to increase the liberty of the average citizen by having the State interfere with certain practices, old or new, which curtail that liberty.

The liberty which the opponents of State interference have in mind is only half liberty; it is to be free from undue restraint and violence on the part of the State and its officers; the other half is what Locke broadly terms freedom “from restraint and violence from others.” To provide for the common defence and to suppress violence within the community may be called the primitive functions of the State. When, therefore, we call upon the government to broaden the liberties of the individual by preventing his more powerful neighbor from interfering unduly with him, we are not asking of it anything new. It is only a new dress which the old problem has put on.

The question must sometimes occur to us who are interested in political science, whether it will ever supply general principles for the guidance of statecraft. At present there seems to be little if any connection between them. Technical skill and special knowledge in history, economics and jurisprudence are appreciated and employed by statesmen, but the idea of determining state policy upon scientific principles has no place in practical politics. In memoirs of Bismarck one finds much about politics as an art and nothing about politics as a science except in contemptuous references to people who approach politics in a doctrinaire spirit. His way of expressing a small opinion of Gladstone's statesmanship was to speak of him as “Professor” Gladstone. This did not mean that Bismarck felt any contempt for professors as such—administration in Germany makes large use of the service of specialists—but that his conception of statecraft was altogether empirical and he distrusted political activities based upon abstract principles. This, I believe, is a frame of mind common among statesmen. Professor Sheldon Amos, in his “Science of Politics” remarks that “practical statesmen, immersed in actual business and oppressed by the ever-recurring presence of new emergencies, almost resent the notion of applying the comprehensive principles of science.”

Examination of manuals of political science might furnish practical statesmen with the retort that political science has no comprehensive principles to offer. Eminent authorities in political science restrict its scope, either by giving a technical meaning to the term “Political” or to the term “the State.”

One day in March, 1903, a junior in the College of Engineering came to me to make up an entrance condition which, on account of an oversight, still stood against him on the books of the University. Under the rules regulating entrance, he was permitted to offer, among other things, a semester's work in American Government. This he chose to do. A few inquiries directed to the young man brought out the fact that he had once had a short high school course in what we still designate by that inane term “Civics,” the worst faded out word in our educational terminology. Aside from this brief course of instruction, his information regarding American Government had been gleaned from reading one or two of the most elementary text-books on the subject, from the dailies, from an occasional article in some magazine, from common conversation and from participation in two elections.

This being the situation the following five simple questions were jotted down and submitted to him as a test:

I. Explain how members of Congress are chosen and state what you know about their terms, qualifications and compensation.

II. Write a brief account of the federal courts. What does the Constitution provide in regard to the establishment of a system of United States courts?

III. Describe clearly the process by which the Constitution of the United States may be amended. How may it be interpreted?

IV. Outline the government of a county in your state.

V. What is meant by the New England plan of township government?