modified in practice, since Politics "is a perpetual compromise between abstract right and actual possibilities; and he illustrated this proposition by pointing out some of these inevitable compromises, such as majority rule and the dis-franchisement of minors, criminals, the insane, &c. &c. Such compromises, so far as the disfranchised are concerned, are justified only, the speaker said, by a presumption of consent. In this connexion he discussed the principle of the "consent of the governed," showirig that actual consent is practically impossible, and that all such consent rests on a legal presumption. Our fathers, when they laid down this very principle in the Declaration of Independence, were proceeding to destroy a government resting on a consent as truly presumed as that on which ours rests today. They were right in doing so, because all legal presumptions should rest on public utility, and should fall when no longer so supported,