CHENEYS AND THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. °: 
Hitherto no great state has been able to sustain 
itself in a front place without aristocracy of some 
kind maintained on the hereditary principle. On 
this point the answer of history is uniform. The 
United States may inaugurate a new experience, 
With the one exception of the Adams’s, the great 
men who have shown as yet in American history 
have no representatives to stand at present in the 
front political ranks. There are no Washingtons, 
no Franklins, no Jeffersons. no Clays or Randolphs, 
now governing States or leading debates in Congress, 
How long this will continue, how long the determin- 
ation that all men shall start equal in the race of 
life will prevail against the instinetive tendencies of 
successful men to perpetuate their names, is the most 
interesting of political problems. "The American 
nationality is as yet too young for conclusions to be 
built on what it has done hitherto, or has forborne 
to do. We shall know better two centuries hence 
whether equality and the ballot-box provide better 
leaders for a people than the old methods of birth 
and training. France was cut in pieces in the revo- 
lution of 1793, and flung into the Medean caldron, 
expecting to emerge again with fresh vitality. 
The rash experiment has not succeeded up to this 
time, and here too we must wait for what her future