The purchase of the Presidency in open market, now generally
recognized, is less disheartening than the apathetic indifference in
which such corruption is regarded by the people. In all communities
men may be found to buy, and men to sell, the sacred privilege upon
which our great Republic rests; but it is rare--so rare that this
experience is almost without precedent--that good citizens, knowing
the nature of their free institutions, are willing to have them
destroyed without an effort in behalf of their preservation.
To get at not only the fact but the reason of it we must remember that
politics to the average citizen has all the fanaticism of religion,
and all the fascination of gambling. We have the country divided in
two hostile camps, and in these organizations themselves we have lost
the objects for which they were organized. This is the tendency of
poor human nature the world over. It is probably more pronounced in
religion than in any other form. A man will not only fight to the
bitter end, but die as a martyr, for a sect whose dogmas he has never
read, or, if read, fails to comprehend. Politics is our popular
religion. Taking the great mass of our citizens, we are pained to
write that it is about our only religion.
We say that we have two hostile camps, in both of which the objects
for which they were organized have been entirely lost. The ordinary
Republican can give no reason for being such save that he is not a
Democrat, and the Democrat has the same reason, if it may be called
such. Each will avow, without hesitation, that the other camp is made
up of knaves and fools. The folly of thus designating over half our
entire voting population does not strike the partisan.
Parties, however, are not called into existence and held together
through intellectual processes. They are founded on feeling. For years
and years the brightest minds and purest characters preached, with
burning eloquence, upon the wrongs of negro slavery, and got ugly
epithets and foul missiles in return, if indeed they were listened to
at all. At a moment of wild frenzy an armed mob at Charleston shot
down our flag. In an instant the entire people of the North rose to
arms, and a frightful war was inaugurated. The flag sentiment
outweighed the Abolition arguments.
It is not our purpose to give the philosophical view of that contest.
We use it only, so far, in illustration. The sectional feeling that
brought on that armed contest continues in another direction, and
divides the two great parties. It is so intense that each is willing
to see the republic under which we live utterly destroyed, so that one
may be conquered or the other defeated.
We are all agreed that the ballot is the foundation-stone of our
entire political structure. On this was built the form of government
given us by the fathers, and was the grand result of all the blood and
treasure, of life and property, so patriotically poured out in the
Revolution that made us independent. Yet this ballot is openly
assailed, its processes corrupted with money, and its usefulness
entirely destroyed, without arousing the indignation of an outraged
public. Men of wealth, of high social position, members of churches,
and leaders in what are called the better classes, subscribe and pay
the money knowingly that is to be used in the purchase of "floaters in
blocks of five" or more, while voters, well-to-do farmers, and
so-called honest laborers are organized willingly into blocks and
shamelessly sell that upon which they and their children depend for
life, liberty, and a right to a recompense for toil. When the result
is announced bonfires are burned, and loud shouts go up amid the roar
of artillery, expressive of the joy felt in such a triumph.
These men of means--it makes no odds how the means are
accumulated--are not aware that in this they are cutting away the
foundations under their feet, and that, too, with ropes about their
necks. Their only security, not only to the enjoyment of their
property but to their lives, lies in the very government they are so
eager to destroy. We have called attention to the fact that humanity
suffers more from an inequality of property than from an inequality of
political rights. These last are rapidly getting to be recognized and
secured in constitutions throughout the civilized world. Kings and
emperors have come to be mere figure-heads above constitutions, and
the political dignity of the poor man is generally acknowledged. But
the poor man remains, and the castle yet rears its lofty front above
the hovels of the suffering laborers. Humanity is yet divided between
the many who produce all and enjoy nothing, and the few who produce
nothing and enjoy all. This is the inequality of property, and
governments yet hold the sufferers to their hard condition. It is
called "law and order," as sacred in the eyes of the Church as it is
potent in courts of justice.
There is no government so poorly fitted to the execution of the hard
task of holding labor down as this of the United States. In Europe
through the dreary ages the masses have been born and bred to their
wretched condition. With us, on the contrary, there has been a great
expenditure of toil and treasure to teach labor its rights. In Europe
great armies are organized and kept upon a war footing for police
duty. We have no such conservative force upon which to rely in our
hour of peril, and yet so far our government has held sway through our
habitual respect for that which we created. These wealthy corruptors
are rapidly destroying this respect. They are teaching the people that
their ballots are merchantable products, and their ballot-box a rotten
affair.
Violence follows fraud as surely as night follows day, or a
thunderstorm a poisoned atmosphere. The day is not distant when these
millionaires will be hunting holes in which to hide from the very mobs
they are now so assiduously calling into existence. God in his divine
mercy forgives us our sins when we are repentant, but the law that
governs our being--called nature--knows no forgiveness. The wound
given the sapling by the woodman's axe is barked over, but that cut,
slight as it seems, remains, and may hasten decay a hundred years
after. The wrong done the body politic may fester unseen, but it
festers on all the same.
Fortunately for the people there is yet a feature in the situation
that gives us hope. We are blessed with no inconsiderable body of men
of sufficient sense and conscience to rise above party control and
vote in support of good measures and honest, capable men. These are
not men dominated by one idea, and devoted to some one measure that is
to remedy all our political ills. These are "cranks," so called,
because they believe that human nature is constructed like
machinery--something like a coffee-mill that has a crank that, if
turned and turned vigorously, will put the entire machine in good
running order. To some this is temperance, to others the tariff, to a
third our common-school system: and so they give their lives to a
vociferous demand for help to turn the one peculiar crank.
We refer, not to such as these, but the thoughtful, patriotic few who
rise above party obligations to a consideration of their country's
good. These men are not organized into a party,--unless the fact of
two men thinking and feeling alike make a party,--and, as compared to
the Republican and Democratic camp-followers, are few in number. But,
in the evenly divided condition of the two organizations, these men
hold the balance of power, and are dreaded in consequence. Had it not
been for the money used by Republicans, and the treachery practised by
a few leading Democrats, these independents would have given New York
to the Democracy, and Grover Cleveland would be President for the next
four years.
These men are derided, scoffed at, and held in high disdain by the
partisans of both parties. They are called Mugwumps; and when this
strange epithet is hurled at them the assailant seems to feel
relieved. This is no new thing. Among the traditions of the Church is
one to the effect that as the devil talks he spits fire. All reformers
are treated to this. It is well remembered that in the troublous times
of '61 the Mugwumps, then denounced as Abolitionists, came to the
front and carried the government through its dark hour of peril to a
triumphant close. They were brave, brainy, patriotic men, not
disturbed by the abuse heaped upon them.
We are comforted to observe the power of these few men as proved in
the debate on the civil-service law of the House when an appropriation
was called for to sustain the Commission. The debate proved what we
all know--that probably not a member of the House but regards the
reform in utter loathing and wrath. And yet, when the vote was taken,
but a small minority were willing to put themselves on record in
opposition. The same clear appreciation of the evil consequences
attending this corruption of the ballot, and the conscience that makes
itself felt as that of the people, are forcing a reform in that
direction. The time is not distant when the now much-reviled Mugwumps
will be regarded, as are the Abolitionists, as the true patriots of
the day. God would have forgiven Sodom and Gomorrah could five
righteous men have been found in either city: this not out of regard
for the five, but from the evidence afforded that if that number
existed, these wicked places could not be altogether lost.