Men speak usually as though voters ranged themselves on one side of a
political question, or another, according to their convictions or
principles. We wish this were so, then we should be nearer having a pure
ballot. But we cannot share this lofty view. It does not seem to us that
the average voter is a man of either political convictions or principles.
Party service does not require intelligent, independent action, and
politics to-day stands for party fealty more than for governmental ethics.
The main question that is decided by an election in our country is, which
political party shall have the privilege of dispensing the offices of
Government? There is a desire on the part of certain persons to obtain
office, for either personal or party advantage, and this desire is
oftentimes so fierce that it will betray the honor of citizenship. Where
this is done, or attempted, lies the danger of the ballot.
If men voted only as their political convictions dictated, we should have
a higher party morality and purer officers, but we must face the facts
even though the duty is not an agreeable one. Politics has degenerated to
a dirty business and political trickery and bribery secure victory where
honor, integrity and principle suffer defeat. The plain truth is, we have
a large class of voters who make merchandise of their right of suffrage,
and a set of demagogues whose business it is to bribe or coerce voters for
the advancement of selfish ends.
The honest, virtuous, intelligent, independent vote is the noblest power
of a freeman, but the purchasable vote, the ignorant vote, the vicious and
servile vote, is the opportunity of the knave and the scoundrel. The
purity of the ballot is the only safety of a Republic, and no greater
danger threatens this nation to-day than that which arises from the
corruption of the suffrage. A ballot should be the honest declaration of
our principles, the expression of our own opinions, the badge of our
manhood; but when it is held in the hand that has sold it for a price, or
will deposit it at the dictation of another, it is the prostitute of greed
and the hired assassin of the despot.
Every man should select his own ballot and vote to please himself, and any
person that would interfere with his right and duty to do this, should be
disfranchised forever. _The individual who does not know enough to select
his own ballot has no right to vote in this country._
There have been too many voters led to the polls, and used as party
troops. There are still slaves on election day who are afraid of the crack
of the whip. There ought to be permitted in this nation no political or
religious disability on account of the honest exercise of the right of
suffrage. A man should be protected from the politician and the priest.
When a man votes as he thinks, he has discharged the highest duty of
citizenship, but when he votes through bribe or fear, he forfeits the
privilege of the ballot. The polls are more sacred to man than the altar.
Religion might die and man could still have every blessing of earth, but
when liberty is killed, the noblest blessing of earth has departed.
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The petty salvation offered by Christianity is not much sought after
to-day, while the world is bending its mighty energies in the direction of
knowledge as never before, and the glory of the electric light, the song
of the steam-whistle, the music of the telegraph, the chorus of machinery
and the grand anthem of countless enterprises tell of a bright and golden
future time when man will master the elements of Nature and guide his life
through its course of years in perfect safety and security and step down
at the end of it,—“Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him
and lies down to pleasant dreams.”