I have never made party differences the occasion of personal quarrel or
estrangement. On the contrary, though I have been always called a Democrat,
I have many near and dear friends among the Republicans. Politics is not
war. Politics would not be war even if the politicians were consistent and
honest. But there are among them so many changelings, cheats and rogues.
Then, in politics as elsewhere, circumstances alter cases. I have as a rule
thought very little of parties as parties, professional politicians and
party leaders, and I think less of them as I grow older. The politician and
the auctioneer might be described like the lunatic, the lover and the poet,
as "of imagination all compact." One sees more mares' nests than would
fill a book; the other pure gold in pinchbeck wares; and both are out for
gudgeons.
It is the habit--nay, the business--of the party speaker when he mounts the
raging stump to roar his platitudes into the ears of those who have the
simplicity to listen, though neither edified nor enlightened; to aver that
the horse he rides is sixteen feet high; that the candidate he supports is
a giant; and that he himself is no small figure of a man.
Thus he resembles the auctioneer. But it is the mock auctioneer whom he
resembles; his stock in trade being largely, if not altogether, fraudulent.
The success which at the outset of party welfare attended this legalized
confidence game drew into it more and more players. For a long time they
deceived themselves almost as much as the voters. They had not become
professional. They were amateur. Many of them played for sheer love of
the gamble. There were rules to regulate the play. But as time passed and
voters multiplied, the popular preoccupation increased the temptations and
opportunities for gain, inviting the enterprising, the skillful and the
corrupt to reconstitute patriotism into a commodity and to organize public
opinion into a bill of lading. Thus politics as a trade, parties as
trademarks, the politicians, like harlots, plying their vocation.
Now and again an able, honest and brave man, who aims at better things,
appears. In the event that fortune favors him and he attains high station,
he finds himself surrounded and thwarted by men less able and courageous,
who, however equal to discovering right from wrong, yet wear the party
collar, owe fealty to the party machine, are sometimes actual slaves of the
party boss. In the larger towns we hear of the City Hall ring; out in the
counties of the Court House ring. We rarely anywhere encounter clean,
responsible administration and pure, disinterested, public service.
The taxpayers are robbed before their eyes. The evil grows greater as we
near the centers of population. But there is scarcely a village or hamlet
where graft does not grow like weeds, the voters as gullible and helpless
as the infatuated victims of bunko tricks, ingeniously contrived by
professional crooks to separate the fool and his money. Is self-government
a failure?
None of us would allow the votaries of the divine right of kings to tell
us so, albeit we are ready enough to admit the imperfections of universal
suffrage, too often committing affairs of pith and moment, even of life and
death, to the arbitrament of the mob, and costing more in cash outlay than
royal establishments.
The quadrennial period in American politics, set apart and dedicated to
the election of presidents, magnifies these evil features in an otherwise
admirable system of government. That the whipper-snappers of the vicinage
should indulge their propensities comes as the order of their nature.
But the party leaders are not far behind them. Each side construes every
occurrence as an argument in its favor, assuring it certain victory. Take,
for example, the latest state election anywhere. In point of fact, it
foretold nothing. It threw no light upon coming events, not even upon
current events. It leaves the future as hazy as before. Yet the managers of
either party affect to be equally confident that it presages the triumph of
their ticket in the next national election. The wonder is that so many of
the voters will believe and be influenced by such transparent subterfuge.
Is there any remedy for all this? I much fear that there is not.
Government, like all else, is impossible of perfection. It is as man
is--good, bad and indifferent; which is but another way of saying we live
in a world of cross purposes. We in America prefer republicanism. But would
despotism be so demurrable under a wise unselfish despot?