for instance, needs no explanation. The same is true of many of the scenes of Hogarth- of "Marriage à la Mode" and "The Industrious and the Idle Apprentice." The cartoons of Raphael tell their story simply, plainly, and forcibly. But in every publication in which pictures are permitted to dominate, it will be found usually that the original text exhibits a tendency to deterioration. There is evidence of this in "Punch," which has lost almost entirely its literary character. Those who like a plenty of pictures do not much care to read. Great poets and novelists and historians have never depended upon pictorial assistance, nor have the ablest magazines and newspapers.

Caricature, which works not necessarily by distortion, but by an aggravation of personal peculiarities, and by a material parody of serious actions, while in some respects analogous to satire, is not necessarily ill-natured. Its tendency, however, is in that direction. It seizes upon manners, physiognomies, and figures, and does its best to render them ridiculous. Even when simply humorous, and so far good-natured, it is intended to have the effect of a serious argument. Its methods are very old, and were used by the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, in early Christian times, in the Middle Ages, and ever since, by most peoples. Caricature, designed for immediate and popular effect, almost always degenerates into coarseness and exaggeration. It takes the color and shape of those to whom it is addressed. English caricature, for example, has usually a touch in it of the pot-house and the prize-ring. Nothing is left to the imagination. The most dignified personages are represented in the most undignified positions. If there is a play, it is horse-play, and of the roughest. Many of the works of Gilray and Bunbury are indecent and hardly fit for the walls of ale-houses. English caricature during the wars with Napoleon sank into sheer degradation, and became utterly disgusting.

Once in four years, on the recurrence of our national election, our politicians find caricature a cheap and ready expedient, and our shop-windows are full of these satirical lithographs, of which the humor is rather dreary, the point scarcely perceptible, and the general style mediocre. Many of them are such as boys would make upon fences, only a little better drawn. The allusion is generally to some campaign scandal, quite bad enough in cold type, and insufferable in a print, especially if inflamed by color. The caricatures of the newspapers are many of them

strong, if not humorous; those of "Puck," for instance, showing a decided advance in the art. The main fault of our political caricature is its incongruity. Frequently a scene is presented representing nothing that ever did happen, or ever can in this world. There is no story, no probable action, no simplicity of truth, no propriety of detail. Often there is a want even of drollery. We are expected to laugh, but we find nothing to laugh at. It is like a comic play in a cheap Third avenue theater. The fun is that of Mr. Merryman in the circus. The picture, whatever the skill displayed by the artist, makes no impression; it is looked at and forgotten.

We trust that in this article we have not been hypercritical. We understand perfectly well the innocent pleasure that cheap pictures give; but we understand, also, that an indulgence in this taste may be carried too far and may work harm both to the illustrator and the illustrated. We are living in a time remarkable for a want of great writers in several departments of literature, and it may be questioned whether this unpleasant state of things may not be attributed, in part, at least, to the intellectual indolence that a habit of indulgence in mere picture-gazing may have originated and confirmed.

CHARLES T. CONGDON.

RESTRICTION OF THE SUFFRAGE.

THERE are two diametrically opposite theories touching the right of suffrage. One is that the universal enjoyment of the right to vote for public officers, and to fill offices in the gift of the people, is a right by natural law. This idea is grounded on the fiction that the obligations of municipal law arise out of a social contract, express or implied; that by this contract suffrage, or voice in the affairs of government, is one of the incidental rights of citizenship, and consequently should be universal, especially in a representative form of government. The other is that, since the true object of government is the welfare of the whole, the duty of the state manifestly is to consider whether suffrage may be more beneficially exercised by the many or the few; that if it is the intelligence and virtue of the community which an elective legislature should represent, their suffrage must of necessity be limited; and that as the state may, in order to secure the general welfare, fix the qualifications of voters, suffrage is, so far from being a natural right incident to citizenship, merely a political privilege.

The first, namely, that suffrage ought to be universal on the assumption that it is a natural right, has been very generally condemned by publicists as erroneous in principle and inexpedient and dangerous in practice. It has never been accepted in the United States. No one has ever pretended that our State governments were originally constituted upon any such a pernicious theory; nor has any American statesman above the grade of the average demagogue ever committed himself to unqualified suffrage as a matter of policy. Suffrage has never been, nor is it now, universal in any of the States of the Union. Women do not vote, and yet they are citizens. Even manhood suffrage is nowhere quite universal. All the State governments annex to its exercise certain qualifications, such as age and terms of pre

vious residence; and in addition to these, the elector is usually the subject of certain taxes. In some of the States, as for instance in Connecticut, he must have served in the militia; in others, a property qualification has always been required. In Rhode Island, every voter must be a freeholder, and the value of his freehold must not be less than $134. And by none of the Constitutions of the original thirteen States was the bare fact of citizenship a qualification to vote for public officers. Citizenship invested its possessor with certain inestimable privileges and immunities of a fundamental character, but the right to vote or hold office was not among them.

The idea of unqualified or "tramp" suffrage, like communism, with which it is closely allied, seems to be of modern origin; and, like that and kindred isms, it usually finds advocates and apologists in the ranks of the discontented, improvident, ignorant, vicious, depraved, and dangerous classes of society. It is not indigenous to the soil, of the United States. It originated in the slums of European cities, and, like the viper in the fable, has been nurtured into formidable activity in this country by misdirected kindness.

But it has been asserted and believed, especially on the opposite side of the Atlantic, that our federal Constitution, as amended by articles xiv. and xv., fastens upon us the doctrine of unqualified suffrage. This is a very common error of opinion among the European masses, who know almost nothing of our complex system of government. But English journalists and magazine writers, who are in a great measure responsible for it, ought to know better. Even a superficial acquaintance with the origin, history, and present provisions of our Constitution, ought to be sufficient to dispel such an illusion.

By our old Constitution of 1777, known as the "Articles of Confederation," representatives in Congress were "appointed in such manner as the Legislature of each State should direct"; and, by the provisions of nearly all the State Legislatures, some kind of property qualification was required, as well of the elector as of the elected. By our present Constitution, adopted in 1787, the House of Representatives is "composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the United States"; and the electors of such members "must have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature" (Art. I., Sec. 2). That is to say, all persons quali

fied by State laws to vote for members of the lower House of the State Legislature, are, by that fact alone, qualified to vote for members of the lower House of Congress; and it follows, as a natural sequence, that persons not so qualified are not legal voters at national elections. Even the "times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives" in Congress, are regulated by local or State legislation. True, "Congress may at any time by law make or alter" these regulations as respects the election of representatives, though not as to senators; but this provision has never been held to extend to the power of fixing the qualifications of electors; that has always been regarded as an exclusive prerogative of the States.

It is very true that, by provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, there is now a citizenship of the United States quite independent of citizenship of an individual State. In other words, a man may now be a citizen of the United States without being a citizen of any one State of the Union; and a citizen of an individual State is, according to the tenor of recent judicial decisions, merely a citizen of the United States residing in a State. But it by no means follows that suffrage is a necessary incident of such national citizenship. The weight of judicial opinion is directly to the contrary. Suffrage is one of the chiefest functions of citizenship, and its just and constitutional possession is the highest evidence of citizenship; still, a man may be a citizen without it. The proposition laid down by Justice Curtis (in 19 How., 581) that "the enjoyment of the elective franchise is not essential to citizenship," has never been set aside.

The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, after defining citizenship of the United States as embracing "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," prohibits the individual States from making or enforcing any law abridging "the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States"; and this has been cited in support of the assumption that the States are prohibited from limiting the elective franchise. The question, then, is, What are these "privileges and immunities"?

The terms are not new in the Constitution. They were in it more than three-quarters of a century before the Fourteenth Amendment had an existence. They occur in the second section of the fourth article, which declares that "the citizens of each