COMMUNICATIONS FROM HORACE GREELEY, GOVERNOR O. P. MORTON, AND A. P.
WILLARD.
On the 7th of April, among other things, I received the following:
"Unless some changes are made in the conduct of your government direful
consequences are to be apprehended. Under the present mode of
administration it is continually subjected to very heavy straining, and it
can not much longer stand it. Many reforms are needed, and the
requirements of patriotism demand that they be seriously considered and
acted upon. Your civil service is entirely wrong, and can not be continued
much longer without serious detriment to your form of government. The
integrity and stability of your institutions are constantly menaced by it.
You claim that you have an elective government. Is the claim true?
Thousands of important public offices are not filled by the elective voice
of the people. They are filled by appointment from purely partisan
considerations--for partisan purposes and as a reward for party services
and party zeal. Fitness and worthiness are secondary and minor
considerations. Hence arise clamorings of party strife, and the
engendering of the festering sore curses of corruption. The Presidential
office had better be abolished than to continue it invested with such vast
patronage in dispensing official appointments. There exists no valid
reason why the people themselves should not select from their neighbors
postmasters, revenue officers, etc., as well as state, county, and
township officers. The Presidential office should either be dispensed with
or its incumbent elected by a direct vote of the people without the
intervention of the cumbersome and corrupting electoral machinery. The
electing of men to elect other men to office is the dodging of a
responsibility and the surrendering of a right of the people that can not
be defended upon sound principles.
"Another danger confronts you menacingly and demands watchful attention.
It is the startling aggregations of wealth among the few, and wrung from
the sweat of labor. These immense accumulations find utilization in the
creation of merciless monopolies which have already assumed gigantic and
threatening proportions in the United States.
"Stock gambling is not a whit better in morals than any of the games of
cards by which the unwary are fleeced out of their hard earnings. The
participants and operators in the one are no better than in the other, and
yet the one, under your Christian civilization is applauded while the
other is denounced. How long yet will the people continue to be hoodwinked
and handicapped by designing political tricksters. We have seen the star
of hope, but now behold the star of promise rising in its refulgent
splendor, and therefore we take heart.
"H. GREELEY."
HON. O. P. MORTON.
On the 13th of April the following communication was received, purporting
to come from the late United States Senator from Indiana, Oliver P.
Morton, viz:
"Amid the rancor and jealousies of party strife I came in for a full share
of abuse and vituperation. I was denounced most bitterly as an ambitious
man, wholly unconscionable and indifferent as to the means employed in the
accomplishment of party ends. Now, I frankly confess that I was not a
saint in politics, nor always, politically speaking, perfectly orthodox. I
am free to admit that I was so constituted that when I once believed a
certain view to be sound and right I never hesitated to use all the
appliances and machinery of party to secure its triumph. I was called a
bold man in politics. I am proud of this, for it is in contradistinction
to all that is sneaking. I aimed to always be right, and believed, in a
certain qualified and honorable sense, that the ends justified the means.
Those who are vociferating so loudly and screaming so painfully about bad
and corrupt men, are generally traveling in the same boat, with the same
sails spread to the breeze. In my mind and heart the country's good was
always a paramount consideration, and I have as few regrets as most men
who have devoted as long a period to public life. The man out of office
feels himself called upon to denounce the man who is in, and affects to
believe himself especially endowed with the requisite qualities to purify
the public service, but when safely ensconced in the incumbency he too
soon finds himself a Barkis, who "is willing." There are many good and
true men engaged in public political life, but none perfect, and you would
be as successful in ransacking _hades_ for an angel of light in your
efforts to find a perfect politician. Whatever is wrong and corrupt in
your public service and political life will never be corrected and
purified by the politicians alone. As well might you hope for a deadly
eating cancer to eradicate itself, or the upas tree, with its deadly
emanations, to give forth health-breeding and life-sustaining exhalations.
The remedy rests alone and wholly with the great masses of the people. The
prostitution of office to the debasing influences of bribery and
corruption must be made odious by fixing austere penalties against the
offender, and the prompt and indiscriminate enforcement of them.
Misfeasance and malfeasance in public office ought to be considered an
unpardonable crime, and the guilty dealt with accordingly. Let the people
teach their officials the doctrine that a continuation of political
existence depends wholly on fidelity to the public interests, and the
honest, faithful and efficient administration of their official trusts.
When there is willful dereliction of duty, or a failure by grossly
reprehensible conduct to meet the just public expectations, not only
relegate the offender to the walks of private life, but impose such
punishment as shall be deemed adequate to the enormity of the crime, and
will deter others from the commission of like offenses.
"O. P. MORTON."
GOV. A. P. WILLARD.
May 19, 1882, I received the following from Ashbel P. Willard, who I learn
was at one time Governor of the State of Indiana, viz.:
"Good morning, sir. I was, during my earth life, a politician, and, to a
certain extent, a successful one, if success may be measured and
determined by captivating the masses, and thereby securing elevation to
office. I was in early life surrounded by poverty, and arose from humble
conditions to the chief magistracy of the great commonwealth of Indiana. I
was of the common people, always kept myself closely allied to them and
their interests, and if you will excuse the egotism, always felt that I
was near their hearts. I was called an orator, and probably to some extent
this was true, for nature had favored me highly in that direction by
organization, and I have occasion to be thankful that whatever gifts I may
have possessed, they were aimed to be exercised for the promotion of the
public good and the happiness and prosperity of the people. In youth I
obtained a common education and taught school, and by teaching the young
the rudiments of education I was enabled to study and observe the
different tendencies and characteristics of mind. While engaged in this
pursuit I discovered some properties of my own mind and some gifts of
speech, which, in public utterance, subsequently distinguished me--not so
much in the forum as on the "hustings" during periodical political
excitements. I soon discovered that the power I was enabled to wield in
political disputations was attracting the people to me, and their voices
at the ballot-box soon called me into official position and consequent
prominence.
"Whatever faults I may have had, it is a proud satisfaction for me to know
that it was never charged that I ever betrayed either a private or public
trust. But in my day things were quite different from what they are now.
The politicians in my day were imbued with a different and a higher
patriotic sense of obligation to the public interests and the general
public weal. The great war of the rebellion seems to have poisoned the
divine streams of patriotism, and the politicians of to-day seem to have
drank too freely therefrom. You have passed through evil times, and they
are still upon you.
"The best minds of the spirit world are hard at work seeking to purify the
waters of political life. It must begin at the fountain head. The people,
the great masses who constitute the fountain of all political power, must
be awakened to a realization of the wretched condition into which they
have permitted public affairs to drift. There must be a quickening of the
public conscience and a revivifying of the patriotism of the early fathers
of the republic. The sanctifying influences of the patriotism of the
revolution must again permeate the hearts of the people. The politicians,
always cunning and watchful of the tendencies and driftings of the public
mind, will either fall in with the new order of things, or be forced to
retire and subside from public notice. The great minds and patriotic
hearts of Washington, Lafayette, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hancock,
Paine, Webster, Clay, Douglas, Lincoln, Garfield, and hosts of others, are
coming from the skies, leaving for awhile the glorious pursuits and joys
of spirit unfoldments to speak to the people, and to lead them away from
the demoralizing and corrupting influences of the partisanship of the day
into better channels and loftier patriotism.
"How shall the work of purifying the public service, restimulation of
patriotism, and the placing of the waning fortunes of the country upon the
high road of prosperity be done? _First._ What is needed to be done?
_Second._ How shall it be done? These questions, so pregnant with mighty
results, should engage your earnest and prayerful consideration. These
matters may be discussed and presented to you, and I am glad that the
means will be furnished to lay them before the people.
"If what I have said will be the means of arousing one patriotic citizen
to the necessity of the governmental reformation now in contemplation by
our spiritual congress, I shall feel then supremely happy that the little
effort in writing these feeble lines was not in vain.
"I was known when in the form, and am still, as
"ASHBEL P. WILLARD."