Then there was another thing that we modestly desired:  We wanted fair elections; we did not want candidates to buy themselves into office.  That seemed reasonable.  So we adopted a law, unique in one particular, namely:  that if you bought an office, you didn’t get it.  I admit that that is contrary to all commercial principles, but I think it is pretty good political doctrine.  It is all very well to put a man in jail for buying an office, but it is very much better, besides putting him in jail, to show him that if he has paid out a single dollar for that office, he does not get it, though a huge majority voted for him.  We reversed the laws of trade; when you buy something in politics in New Jersey, you do not get it.  It seemed to us that that was the best way to discourage improper political argument.  If your money does not produce the goods, then you are not tempted to spend your money.

We adopted a Corrupt Practices Act, the reasonable foundation of which no man could question, and an Election Act, which every man predicted was not going to work, but which did work,—­to the emancipation of the voters of New Jersey.

All these things are now commonplaces with us.  We like the laws that we have passed, and no man ventures to suggest any material change in them.  Why didn’t we get them long ago?  What hindered us?  Why, because we had a closed government; not an open government.  It did not belong to us.  It was managed by little groups of men whose names we knew, but whom somehow we didn’t seem able to dislodge.  When we elected men pledged to dislodge them, they only went into partnership with them.  Apparently what was necessary was to call in an amateur who knew so little about the game that he supposed that he was expected to do what he had promised to do.

There are gentlemen who have criticised the Governor of New Jersey because he did not do certain things,—­for instance, bring a lot of indictments.  The Governor of New Jersey does not think it necessary to defend himself; but he would like to call attention to a very interesting thing that happened in his State:  When the people had taken over control of the government, a curious change was wrought in the souls of a great many men; a sudden moral awakening took place, and we simply could not find culprits against whom to bring indictments; it was like a Sunday school, the way they obeyed the laws.

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So I say, there is nothing very difficult about resuming our own government.  There is nothing to appall us when we make up our minds to set about the task.  “The way to resume is to resume,” said Horace Greeley, once, when the country was frightened at a prospect which turned out to be not in the least frightful; it was at the moment of the resumption of specie payments for Treasury notes.  The Treasury simply resumed,—­there was not a ripple of danger or excitement when the day of resumption came around.