to walk carefully. Let him beware of associating only with the people
of his own caste and of his own little ways of political thought. Let
him learn that he must deal with the mass of men; that he must go out
and stand shoulder to shoulder with his friends of every rank, and
face to face with his foes of every rank, and must bear himself well
in the hurly-burly. He must not be frightened by the many unpleasant
features of the contest, and he must not expect to have it all his
own way, or to accomplish too much. He will meet with checks and will
make many mistakes; but if he perseveres, he will achieve a measure of
success and will do a measure of good such as is never possible to the
refined, cultivated, intellectual men who shrink aside from the actual
fray.
Yet again, college men must learn to be as practical in politics as
they would be in business or in law. It is surely unnecessary to say
that by “practical” I do not mean anything that savors in the least
of dishonesty. On the contrary, a college man is peculiarly bound to
keep a high ideal and to be true to it; but he must work in practical
ways to try to realize this ideal, and must not refuse to do anything
because he cannot get everything. One especially necessary thing is to
know the facts by actual experience, and not to take refuge in mere
theorizing. There are always a number of excellent and well-meaning
men whom we grow to regard with amused impatience because they waste
all their energies on some visionary scheme which, even if it were not
visionary, would be useless. When they come to deal with political
questions, these men are apt to err from sheer lack of familiarity with
the workings of our government. No man ever really learned from books
how to manage a governmental system. Books are admirable adjuncts, and
the statesman who has carefully studied them is far more apt to do good
work than if he had not; but if he has never done anything but study
books he will not be a statesman at all. Thus, every young politician
should of course read the _Federalist_. It is the greatest book of
the kind that has ever been written. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay would
have been poorly equipped for writing it if they had not possessed an
extensive acquaintance with literature, and in particular if they had
not been careful students of political literature; but the great cause
of the value of their writings lay in the fact that they knew by actual
work and association what practical politics meant. They had helped to
shape the political thought of the country, and to do its legislative
and executive work, and so they were in a condition to speak
understandingly about it. For similar reasons, Mr. Bryce’s _American
Commonwealth_ has a value possessed by no other book of the kind,
largely because Mr. Bryce is himself an active member of Parliament,
a man of good standing and some leadership in his own party, and a
practical politician. In the same way, a life of Washington by Cabot
Lodge, a sketch of Lincoln by Carl Schurz, a biography of Pitt by Lord
Rosebery, have an added value because of the writers’ own work in
politics.
It is always a pity to see men fritter away their energies on any
pointless scheme; and unfortunately, a good many of our educated people
when they come to deal with politics, do just such frittering. Take,
for instance, the queer freak of arguing in favor of establishing
what its advocates are pleased to call “responsible government” in
our institutions, or in other words of grafting certain features
of the English parliamentary system upon our own Presidential and
Congressional system. This agitation was too largely deficient in
body to enable it to last, and it has now, I think, died away; but
at one time quite a number of our men who spoke of themselves as
students of political history were engaged in treating this scheme
as something serious. Few men who had ever taken an active part in
politics, or who had studied politics in the way that a doctor is
expected to study surgery and medicine, so much as gave it a thought;
but very intelligent men did, just because they were misdirecting their
energies, and were wholly ignorant that they ought to know practically
about a problem before they attempted its solution. The English, or
so-called “responsible,” theory of parliamentary government is one
entirely incompatible with our own governmental institutions. It could
not be put into operation here save by absolutely sweeping away the
United States Constitution. Incidentally, I may say it would be to
the last degree undesirable, if it were practicable. But this is not
the point upon which I wish to dwell; the point is that it was wholly
impracticable to put it into operation, and that an agitation favoring
this kind of government was from its nature unintelligent. The people
who wrote about it wasted their time, whereas they could have spent
it to great advantage had they seriously studied our institutions and
sought to devise practicable and desirable methods of increasing and
centring genuine responsibility--for all thinking men agree that there
is an undoubted need for a change in this direction.
But of course much of the best work that has been done in the field of
political study has been done by men who were not active politicians,
though they were careful and painstaking students of the phenomena
of politics. The back numbers of our leading magazines afford proof
of this. Certain of the governmental essays by such writers as Mr.
Lawrence Lowell and Professor A. B. Hart, and especially such books as
that on the _Speakers’ Powers and Duties_, by Miss Follet, have been
genuine and valuable contributions to our political thought. These
essays have been studied carefully not only by scholars, but by men
engaged in practical politics, because they were written with good
judgment and keen insight after careful investigation of the facts, and
so deserved respectful attention.
It is a misfortune for any people when the paths of the practical
and the theoretical politicians diverge so widely that they have no
common standing-ground. When the Greek thinkers began to devote their
attention to purely visionary politics of the kind found in Plato’s
Republic, while the Greek practical politicians simply exploited the
quarrelsome little commonwealths in their own interests, then the
end of Greek liberty was at hand. No government that cannot command
the respectful support of the best thinkers is in an entirely sound
condition; but it is well to keep in mind the remark of Frederick
the Great, that if he wished to punish a province, he would allow it
to be governed by the philosophers. It is a great misfortune for the
country when the practical politician and the doctrinaire have no
point in common, but the misfortune is, if anything, greatest for the
doctrinaire. The ideal to be set before the student of politics and
the practical politician alike is the ideal of the _Federalist_. Each
man should realize that he cannot do his best, either in the study
of politics or in applied politics unless he has a working knowledge
of both branches. A limited number of people can do good work by the
careful study of governmental institutions, but they can do it only
if they have themselves a practical knowledge of the workings of
these institutions. A very large number of people, on the other hand,
may do excellent work in politics without much theoretic knowledge
of the subject; but without this knowledge they cannot rise to the
highest rank, while in any rank their capacity to do good work will be
immensely increased if they have such knowledge.
There are certain other qualities, about which it is hardly necessary
to speak. If an educated man is not heartily American in instinct
and feeling and taste and sympathy, he will amount to nothing in our
public life. Patriotism, love of country, and pride in the flag which
symbolizes country may be feelings which the race will at some period
outgrow, but at present they are very real and strong, and the man who
lacks them is a useless creature, a mere incumbrance to the land.
A man of sound political instincts can no more subscribe to the
doctrine of absolute independence of party on the one hand than to
that of unquestioning party allegiance on the other. No man can
accomplish much unless he works in an organization with others, and
this organization, no matter how temporary, is a party for the time
being. But that man is a dangerous citizen who so far mistakes means
for ends as to become servile in his devotion to his party, and afraid
to leave it when the party goes wrong. To deify either independence or
party allegiance merely as such is a little absurd. It depends entirely
upon the motive, the purpose, the result. For the last two years, the
Senator who, beyond all his colleagues in the United States Senate, has
shown himself independent of party ties is the very man to whom the
leading champions of independence in politics most strenuously object.
The truth is, simply, that there are times when it may be the duty of a
man to break with his party, and there are other times when it may be
his duty to stand by his party, even though, on some points, he thinks
that party wrong; he must be prepared to leave it when necessary,
and he must not sacrifice his influence by leaving it unless it is
necessary. If we had no party allegiance, our politics would become
mere windy anarchy, and, under present conditions, our government could
hardly continue at all. If we had no independence, we should always be
running the risk of the most degraded kind of despotism,--the despotism
of the party boss and the party machine.
It is just the same way about compromises. Occasionally one hears some
well-meaning person say of another, apparently in praise, that he is
“never willing to compromise.” It is a mere truism to say that, in
politics, there has to be one continual compromise. Of course now and
then questions arise upon which a compromise is inadmissible. There
could be no compromise with secession, and there was none. There should
be no avoidable compromise about any great moral question. But only a
very few great reforms or great measures of any kind can be carried
through without concession. No student of American history needs to be
reminded that the Constitution itself is a bundle of compromises, and
was adopted only because of this fact, and that the same thing is true
of the Emancipation Proclamation.
In conclusion, then, the man with a university education is in honor
bound to take an active part in our political life, and to do his
full duty as a citizen by helping his fellow-citizens to the extent
of his power in the exercise of the rights of self-government. He is
bound to rank action far above criticism, and to understand that the
man deserving of credit is the man who actually does the things, even
though imperfectly, and not the man who confines himself to talking
about how they ought to be done. He is bound to have a high ideal and
to strive to realize it, and yet he must make up his mind that he will
never be able to get the highest good, and that he must devote himself
with all his energy to getting the best that he can. Finally, his
work must be disinterested and honest, and it must be given without
regard to his own success or failure, and without regard to the effect
it has upon his own fortunes; and while he must show the virtues of
uprightness and tolerance and gentleness, he must also show the sterner
virtues of courage, resolution, and hardihood, and the desire to war
with merciless effectiveness against the existence of wrong.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[5] _Atlantic Monthly_, August, 1894.
[Illustration]
V
PHASES OF STATE LEGISLATION[6]
THE ALBANY LEGISLATURE.
Few persons realize the magnitude of the interests affected by
State legislation in New York. It is no mere figure of speech to
call New York the Empire State; and many of the laws most directly
and immediately affecting the interests of its citizens are passed
at Albany, and not at Washington. In fact, there is at Albany a
little home rule parliament which presides over the destinies of a
commonwealth more populous than any one of two thirds of the kingdoms
of Europe, and one which, in point of wealth, material prosperity,
variety of interests, extent of territory, and capacity for expansion,
can fairly be said to rank next to the powers of the first class. This
little parliament, composed of one hundred and twenty-eight members in
the Assembly and thirty-two in the Senate, is, in the fullest sense of
the term, a _representative_ body; there is hardly one of the many and
widely diversified interests of the State that has not a mouthpiece at
Albany, and hardly a single class of its citizens--not even excepting,
I regret to say, the criminal class--which lacks its representative
among the legislators. In the three Legislatures of which I have been
a member, I have sat with bankers and bricklayers, with merchants
and mechanics, with lawyers, farmers, day-laborers, saloonkeepers,
clergymen, and prize-fighters. Among my colleagues there were many very
good men; there was a still more numerous class of men who were neither
very good nor very bad, but went one way or the other, according to the
strength of the various conflicting influences acting around, behind,
and upon them; and, finally, there were many very bad men. Still, the
New York Legislature, taken as a whole, is by no means as bad a body
as we would be led to believe if our judgment was based purely on
what we read in the great metropolitan papers; for the custom of the
latter is to portray things as either very much better or very much
worse than they are. Where a number of men, many of them poor, some of
them unscrupulous, and others elected by constituents too ignorant to
hold them to a proper accountability for their actions, are put into
a position of great temporary power, where they are called to take
action upon questions affecting the welfare of large corporations and
wealthy private individuals, the chances for corruption are always
great; and that there is much viciousness and political dishonesty,
much moral cowardice, and a good deal of actual bribe-taking in
Albany, no one who has had any practical experience of legislation can
doubt; but, at the same time, I think that the good members generally
outnumber the bad, and that there is not often doubt as to the result
when a naked question of right or wrong can be placed clearly and in
its true light before the Legislature. The trouble is that on many
questions the Legislature never does have the right and wrong clearly
shown it. Either some bold, clever parliamentary tactician snaps the
measure through before the members are aware of its nature, or else
the obnoxious features are so combined with good ones as to procure
the support of a certain proportion of that large class of men whose
intentions are excellent, but whose intellects are foggy. Or else the
necessary party organization, which we call the “machine,” uses its
great power for some definite evil aim.
THE CHARACTER OF THE REPRESENTATIONS.
The representatives from different sections of the State differ widely
in character. Those from the country districts are generally very good
men. They are usually well-to-do farmers, small lawyers, or prosperous
store-keepers, and are shrewd, quiet, and honest. They are often
narrow-minded and slow to receive an idea; but, on the other hand, when
they get a good one, they cling to it with the utmost tenacity. They
form very much the most valuable class of legislators. For the most
part they are native Americans, and those who are not are men who
have become completely Americanized in all their ways and habits of
thought. One of the most useful members of the last Legislature was a
German from a western county, and the extent of his Americanization can
be judged from the fact that he was actually an ardent prohibitionist:
certainly no one who knows Teutonic human nature will require further
proof. Again, I sat for an entire session beside a very intelligent
member from northern New York before I discovered that he was an
Irishman: all his views of legislation, even upon such subjects as free
schools and the impropriety of making appropriations from the treasury
for the support of sectarian institutions, were precisely similar to
those of his Protestant-American neighbors, though he was himself a
Catholic. Now a German or an Irishman from one of the great cities
would probably have retained many of his national peculiarities.
It is from these same great cities that the worst legislators come.
It is true that there are always among them a few cultivated and
scholarly men who are well educated, and who stand on a higher and
broader intellectual and moral plane than the country members, but the
bulk are very low indeed. They are usually foreigners, of little or no
education, with exceedingly misty ideas as to morality, and possessed
of an ignorance so profound that it could only be called comic, were
it not for the fact that it has at times such serious effects upon our
laws. It is their ignorance, quite as much as actual viciousness,
which makes it so difficult to procure the passage of good laws or
prevent the passage of bad ones; and it is the most irritating of the
many elements with which we have to contend in the fight for good
government.
DARK SIDE OF THE LEGISLATIVE PICTURE.
Mention has been made above of the bribe-taking which undoubtedly at
times occurs in the New York Legislature. This is what is commonly
called “a delicate subject” with which to deal, and, therefore,
according to our usual methods of handling delicate subjects, it is
either never discussed at all, or else discussed with the grossest
exaggeration; but most certainly there is nothing about which it is
more important to know the truth.
In each of the last three legislatures there were a number of us who
were interested in getting through certain measures which we deemed
to be for the public good, but which were certain to be strongly
opposed, some for political and some for pecuniary reasons. Now, to
get through any such measure requires genuine hard work, a certain
amount of parliamentary skill, a good deal of tact and courage, and
above all, a thorough knowledge of the men with whom one has to deal,
and of the motives which actuate them. In other words, before taking
any active steps, we had to “size up” our fellow-legislators, to
find out their past history and present character and associates, to
find out whether they were their own masters or were acting under
the directions of somebody else, whether they were bright or stupid,
etc., etc. As a result, and after very careful study, conducted
purely with the object of learning the truth, so that we might work
more effectually, we came to the conclusion that about a third of the
members were open to corrupt influences in some form or other; in
certain sessions the proportion was greater, and in some less. Now it
would, of course, be impossible for me or for anyone else to prove in
a court of law that these men were guilty, except perhaps in two or
three cases; yet we felt absolutely confident that there was hardly
a case in which our judgment as to the honesty of any given member
was not correct. The two or three exceptional cases alluded to, where
legal proof of guilt might have been forthcoming, were instances in
which honest men were approached by their colleagues at times when
the need for votes was very great; but, even then, it would have been
almost impossible to punish the offenders before a court, for it would
have merely resulted in his denying what his accuser stated. Moreover,
the members who had been approached would have been very reluctant
to come forward, for each of them felt ashamed that his character
should not have been well enough known to prevent anyone’s daring to
speak to him on such a subject. And another reason why the few honest
men who are approached (for the lobbyist rarely makes a mistake in
his estimate of the men who will be apt to take bribes) do not feel
like taking action in the matter is that a doubtful lawsuit will
certainly follow, which will drag on so long that the public will come
to regard all of the participants with equal distrust, while in the
end the decision is quite as likely to be against as to be for them.
Take the Bradly-Sessions case, for example. This was an incident that
occurred at the time of the faction-fight in the Republican ranks
over the return of Mr. Conkling to the United States Senate after his
resignation from that body. Bradly, an Assemblyman, accused Sessions,
a State Senator, of attempting to bribe him. The affair dragged on for
an indefinite time; no one was able actually to determine whether it
was a case of blackmail on the one hand, or of bribery on the other;
the vast majority of people recollected the names of both parties, but
totally forgot which it was that was supposed to have bribed the other,
and regarded both with equal disfavor; and the upshot has been that the
case is now merely remembered as illustrating one of the most unsavory
phases of the once-famous Halfbreed-Stalwart fight.
DIFFICULTIES OF PREVENTING AND PUNISHING CORRUPTION.
From the causes indicated, it is almost impossible to actually convict
a legislator of bribe-taking; but at the same time, the character of a
legislator, if bad, soon becomes a matter of common notoriety, and no
dishonest legislator can long keep his reputation good with honest men.
If the constituents wish to know the character of their member, they
can easily find it out, and no member will be dishonest if he thinks
his constituents are looking at him; he presumes upon their ignorance
or indifference. I do not see how bribe-taking among legislators can
be stopped until the public conscience becomes awake to the matter.
Then it will stop fast enough; for just as soon as politicians realize
that the people are in earnest in wanting a thing done, they make haste
to do it. The trouble is always in rousing the people sufficiently
to make them take an _effective_ interest,--that is, in making them
sufficiently in earnest to be willing to give a little of their time to
the accomplishment of the object they have in view.