Politian

“ Is it wonderful that the framers of our Constitution should not have intrusted a single officer with the formidable power of bringing all these calamities upon the Republic—an officer, too, who, for a certain time, does not stand under the immediate control of the representatives of the people? ”

“ I kept telling them at the Convention, 'As long as you do not have an organized police and a minister of police—one who is not only appointed to the office but fitted for it—things will go to the devil.' Well, I who have a dozen fellows under me for the pleasure of it—I who am an amateur policeman because I like the business—I am better informed than they. ”

“ Here is the leader of a great party engaged in a most important contest. The character of the government, the welfare of the greatest city of the republic, one of the greatest cities of the world, is at stake. But this is nothing to him. All he things of is not the interest of three and a half millions of people, not the prosperity and good name of one of the world's most important emporiums of commerce and industry—what he thinks of is simply the spoils of office—patronage. ”

“ But what will happen if men who persist in regarding public place as the mere spoil of party warfare, and their official power as a legitimate means for serving the “machine,” are put at the head of public departments and entrusted with the management of civil service examinations? ”

“ The policeman roars out name of leading constituent.
Leading constituent departed in a huff twenty minutes ago,
Because he thought you were not attending to him.
There being no answer,
Policeman roars out name of leading constituent once more.
Name echoes along Lords' Lobby;
But not being there, leading constituent fails to come forward.
You look embarrassed, turn tail, retire to your back bench,
And feel deucedly uncomfortable for the rest of the evening. ”

“ We saw those in authority with tyrannical insolence thrust the hand of power through the vast machinery of the public service into local and private affairs, and we saw the innumerable mass of their adherents accept those encroachments upon their independence without protest or resentment. ”

“ Who will undertake to say, as a state officer, that the people may not give to the general government what powers, and for what purposes, they please? How comes it, sir, that these state governments dictate to their superiors—to the majesty of the people? ”

“ Now, suppose that this police-force becomes the army of a political Power, and the diplomats of that Power say to a smaller one: "We outnumber you; we are going to annex your territory, and you are going to pay us tribute." And the smaller Power says: "What are you going to give us for that tribute?" And the larger replies: "Nothing. You are weak; we are strong; we gobble you up. It is the law of life; always has been—always will be to the end." ”

“ But as public administrators, as your representatives, they will reply to the imputations of these agitators, and show them where good faith and patriotism have been found, and where ambitious passions, which incessantly have destroyed the bowels of the country. Reduced from henceforward by our own choice to the rank of simple citizens, without any other reward than the remembrance of the zeal and of the labours which we have employed in the public service, we are ready, or, more truly, we are anxious, to reply to our calumniators before the Cortes, or the tribunal which it shall appoint. ”

“ Examining the history of his native city with the eye of a statesman, and meditating upon the civic revolutions which he himself had witnessed, that sagacious politician had observed, that in the contentions for power which had frequently taken place between the aristocracy and the lower orders of the state, the plebeian faction had almost always failed, through want of a leader whose authority might restrain their irregularities, and whose judgment might give to their efforts the consistency and energy of system. ”

“ We have enumerated some of the heads under which a people, as they emerge from barbarity, may come to be classed. Such are, the nobility, the people, the adherents of the prince; and even the priesthood have not been forgotten; when we arrive at times of refinement, the army must be joined to the list. The departments of civil government and of war being severed, and the pre-eminence being given to the statesman, the ambitious will naturally devolve the military service on those who are contented with a subordinate station. ”

“ Those forces consist of the small politicians who covet the offices for their personal advantage, the political leaders who seek to control the offices as party spoil in order to hold together and increase their following, and the unsteady statesmen in power who, while professing, often not without sincerity, to be “also” in favor of civil service reform, have indeed courage enough to assert their professed principles against their party enemies, but not firmness enough to maintain them against their party friends. ”

“ By the term police, we mean the state power whose office it is, without mediation, to prevent all disturbances of external order among the people.142 It may extend its action into all the domains of national life mentioned above, whenever external order is there threatened, or calls for protection ”

“ They had so long seen the public policy more or less directed by views of party, and often even of personal advantage, as to be ready to suspect the motives of a chief magistrate compelled, for the first time in our history, to feel himself the head and hand of a great nation, and to act upon the fundamental maxim, laid down by all publicists, that the first duty of a government is to defend and maintain its own existence. ”

“ In those years I discovered the importance of the political pull. The local politician, by his influence with the Police Commissioners and the chief police authorities, could generally make the sergeant his mouthpiece, and induce him to give preference and show favours to patrolmen who were friends and supporters of the politician. ”

“ Logically you should proceed to supply their places by other governments, while the military is in the nature of police, until permanent governments are organized, republican in form and loyal in character. ”

“ The remedy is for all such true patriots to club together and found a party and a Press which will have nothing to say to clericalism and anti-clericalism and other such questions, never for a moment discuss them—what have they to do with the government of a State?—will not concern itself with personal ambitions, merely looking upon the State as a public department of police and civil servants, implying hard work, and pay far less than [244] would be earned by men of similar intelligence devoted to industry. ”

“ The ministers generally employ some of these expectants to do their dirty work for them; and any measure that is prosecuted by the Whigs is, at least was, at the time of which I am speaking, thought by a great number of well-meaning but ignorant people, to be perfectly justifiable. As I pass along I shall be able to prove to the reader, how well the factions manage these matters, how skilfully they always play into each other's hands, against the rights, the property, and the liberties of the people. ”

“ Now, sir, observe the effect which this system is calculated to produce upon the character of those who are under its influence. Officers being party servants, have they not to sacrifice to a very great extent the independence of their own opinions? Is it not true that their very position breeds hypocrisy, sycophancy and venality, and that this is apt to result in a deterioration of manhood? ”

“ All political authority is vested in the people themselves, They have the right to select their officers and agents, and these officers and agents are responsible to the people. Political authority does not come from the clouds. ”

“ And I thought of our democratic country, in which we imprison the rulers of States in an impenetrable circle of police-supervision, whereas here, in a monarchical country, labouring under a so-called reign of terror, the sovereign walks about in the midst of strangers, unprotected by any precautionary measures. ”

“ Multitudinous and heterogeneous masses are mingled in our body politic to-day, coming from nations that know nothing about the traditions of Puritan, or Pilgrim, or Dutch, or Cavalier. In many of these nations from which these peoples come and mingle in our life, the only thought of government is that of power, of police force, or suppression. ”

“ Each of these improvised legislators has come satisfied with his own system, and to submit to a leader to whom he would entrust his political conscience, to make of him what three out of four of these deputies should be, a voting machine, would require an apprehension of danger, some painful experience, an enforced surrender which he is far from realizing.2104 For this reason, save in the violent party, each acts as his own chief, according to the impulse of the moment, and the confusion may be imagined. ”

“ To comport, then, with the surroundings in the ruling classes and with the necessity for discipline among men so base in mercenary wars for the benefit of the ruling classes alone, the Organization and Administration were made to consist of two [365] classes—officers and men—as widely separated as master and slave; the officer became by laws, written and unwritten, despotic and supercilious, with power even to take life without responsibility; the man servile and blindly obedient in the most abject sense, without remedies against his cruel wrongs. ”

“ He has not only the documents in his pocket to answer all cavils, and to prove all his positions, but he has the eternal reason in his head. This man scornfully renounces your civil organizations,—county, or city, or governor, or army,—is his own navy and artillery, judge and jury, legislature and executive. ”

“ Nor can the people, unless some strong and influential leaders rally them, and, like great generals, lead them to the battle. As I said a little while ago, there are ten or twenty men in this city who, if they could be made to feel their high responsibility—who, if they could be induced to look away for a brief period from their great enterprises and concentrate thought and effort upon these questions of social evil, abuse of justice and violations of law—would in a single month inaugurate reforms and set agencies to work that would soon produce marvelous changes. ”

“ Nobody can deny that it possesses a certain kind of efficiency, compactness, and promptness of movement, which cannot, from the nature of things, belong to a republic. Despotism has established and sustained much more efficient systems of police than ever a republic did. ”

“ Thus, without any settled form of government, or any bond of union, but what resembled more the suggestion of instinct, than the invention of reason, they conducted themselves with the concert and the force of nations. Foreigners, without being able to discover who is the magistrate, or in what manner the senate is composed, always find a council with whom they may treat, or a band of warriors with whom they may fight. ”

“ All these tendencies are observable, and civil service reform is to be studied in connection with them and with all other political reform movements. Eternal vigilance, and not merely the mechanical selection of public officers, is the price of liberty. ”

“ Beyond all these departments of government are other tools at the service of the ruling class to help it maintain political dominance, regiment public opinion, terrorize and repress dissenters, employ and reward servants and agents of all kinds, to the end of constantly increasing its profits, intensifying its exploitation of the population and extending its enormous powers. ”

“ The mediæval doctrine of authority still haunts our political and social thinking; but there are few people in a democratic community who behave themselves only when and because there is a policeman about. ”

“ There is an orator presiding on either side, a general under him, and three hundred men to shout; the rest of you are attached to the one party or the other. This you must leave off; be yourselves again; establish a general liberty of speech, deliberation, and action. If some are appointed to command as with royal authority, some to be ship-captains, tax-payers, soldiers by compulsion, others only to vote against them, and help in nothing besides, no duty will be seasonably performed; the aggrieved parties will still fail you, and you will have to punish them instead of your enemies. ”

“ One of the principal difficulties is, that the practical domain of the police power is, in consequence of the successive grades of civilization through which a people passes, subject to greater modifications than any other state power. ”

“ The men of politics, who naturally take their point of departure in this datum of experience, that the officers of the state, whether by the acquiescence of the subject masses or profiting by the antitheses of interests of the different social groups, may set aims for themselves and realize them voluntarily and in a deliberate fashion,—these men are brought to see in the succession of human events only a variation of these designs, these projects and these intentions. ”

“ than to see the Easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and to observe the implicite Submission with which Men resign their own Sentiments and Passions to those of their Rulers. When we enquire by what Means this Wonder is brought about, we shall find, that as Force is always on the Side of the Governed, the Governors have nothing to support them but Opinion. 'Tis therefore, on Opinion only that Government is founded; and this Maxim extends to the most despotick and most military Governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. ”