Populists

“ Not only has each leading political party made the attempt, but the task has been undertaken by the Greenbackers, the Populists and by those who would form a party of their own, or be independent of all parties. ”

“ Some of this reaction is due to the lack of true patriotism, to a lack of courage, fortitude; but whatever the cause may be, Populists should be prepared for the back-set and save as much advantage as possible. At the present every man is our friend. Almost without an exception the great statesmen and editors are with us. For the time being party lines are wiped out, Democrat or Republican, North or South. ”

“ With already the cheapest railroad transportation in the world, people were clamoring for it to be made cheaper. Crazy Populists were telling the farmers it ought to be free, like the air. Prejudice against railroads was amazing, irrational and suicidal. All profit in railroading had been taxed and regulated away. Incentive to build new roads had been destroyed. If by a special design of the Lord a railroad did seem to prosper the politicians pounced upon it and either mulcted it secretly or held it forth to the public as a monster that must be chained up with restrictive laws. ”

“ To Southern Populists Democrats were more execrable than Republicans. Westerners of that faith were jealous of Sewall as an Eastern man and rich. Too close union with Democracy threatened Populism with extinction. Rightly divining that their leaders wished such a “merger,” the Populist rank and file insisted on nominating their candidate for the vice-presidency first. Bryan was made head of the ticket next day. The silver Republicans acclaimed the whole Democratic ticket, Sewall as well as Bryan. ”

“ In Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, and Wyoming most Democrats voted for him. Partial fusion of the sort prevailed also in North Dakota, Nevada, Minnesota, and Oregon. Weaver carried all these States save the two last named. In Louisiana and Alabama Republicans fused with Populists. The Tillman movement in South Carolina, nominally Democratic, was akin to Populism, but was complicated with the color question, and later with novel liquor legislation. It was a revolt of the ordinary whites from the traditional dominance of the aristocracy. ”

“ Are there no party contests stirring the popular mind to its very depth? And now, in the freest of all countries, where the people in the largest sense are called to govern themselves, where the people owe so much to their democratic institutions and are said to be so proud of them, here there should not be patriotism and public spirit enough, here it should require the sordid allurement of spoils and plunder to inspire the citizens with an active interest in their own affairs? ”

“ Every month the Populist party increased in strength, the East watching it with mingled fear and contempt and ignorance. The comic papers pictured as the typical Populist the raw-boned, booted, unkempt farmer, in shirt-sleeves and with flowing beard. ”

“ We mean to be perfectly understood on this point, and therefore openly disclaim all steel-traps, all principle, as it is called—all party—all politics. Our only guide shall be good, sound, practical common sense, applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in every-day life. We shall support no party—be the organ of no faction or coterie, and care nothing for any election or any candidate from president down to a constable. ”

“ We wish to turn our backs on all sectional parties, and on all parties groping in the moonlight of the past, and to ally ourselves with any party that will be animated with the spirit of civil and religious toleration, broad and elevated patriotism, not bounded by State lines, and inspired with pride and an abiding faith in the genius of free institutions. ”

“ You can lift party politics up to a higher plane by striking the decisive blow at the spoils system. You can extend and perpetuate the reform of the civil service. You can thus bring about a state of things in which public questions can once more be discussed on their own merits. ”

“ When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.... ”

“ Every Representative elected by the Populist, every Senator selected as the result of their votes cast for the State legislators, will recognize that the Populist party contains the same elements, to the plain “Common People,” as the Democratic party, and, therefore, faith will best be kept with the constituents by whom the [Pg 415] Populist Representatives and Senators were elected, by acting with the Democratic party, so long as it continues to wage war upon “caste” and class distinctions and the accumulation of wealth in a dangerous degree in our country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The great game of the government was to sow, if not dissension, at least distrust, in the ranks of the national party,—to chill the ardor of patriotism, and, wherever possible, to excite different views, and different roads to success, amongst the popular leaders of the time. ”

“ The desire that Parliament shall be the exponent of the whole people, not merely of a majority, is true Democracy. But Democracy commonly abandons that position and allies itself with the selfish interests of a single class. ”

“ Will the partialities of a government between different classes promote the harmony and happiness of society? Is not their discord the universal consequence of the fraudulent power assumed by governments, of allotting to classes and individuals indigence or wealth, according to their own pleasure? Has not the English parliament been fatigued for centuries with eternal petitions, remonstrances, and lamentations from the artificial combinations it has created, or the natural classes it has favoured or oppressed, soliciting partialities, and deploring their pernicious effects? ”

“ How they prayed for calmness, prudence, wisdom; begged that the legislators should not suffer themselves to be led into the temptation of partisan pride or party predilection; besought them to remember that their own just powers were loaned to them by the people at the polls, and that they must decide the people's will and not their own political preference ”

“ The conduct of the Government and their supporters has been just what might have been expected from their language in Parliament: they have sacrificed every other object to that of catching votes; at one time and at one place representing themselves as Free Traders, and in another as Protectionists, and everywhere pandering to the ignorance and bigotry of the masses by fanning the No-Popery flame. ”

“ In the struggle between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians in the seventeenth century, the two most elementary parties into which a nation can be divided, and which in every community exist in a more or less developed state, came into inevitable contest. The principles of authority on the one side and of liberty on the other were opposed in the most direct manner. These two ideas are both essential to the existence of society and to the exercise of the functions of government ”

“ These different orders of men are the elements of whose mixture the political body is generally formed; each draws to its side some part from the mass of the people. The people themselves are a party upon occasion; and numbers of men, however classed and distinguished, become, by their jarring pretensions and separate views, mutual interruptions and checks; and have, by bringing to the national councils the maxims and apprehensions of a particular order, and by guarding a particular interest, a share in adjusting or preserving the political form of the state. ”

“ Every intelligent and unprejudiced citizen, when he candidly inquires into the developments which have brought about the present state of things, will understand that of the evils which have so alarmingly demoralized our political life, and so sadly lowered this Republic in the respect of the world, many, if not most, had their origin, and find their sustenance, in that practice which treats the public offices as the plunder of victorious parties ”

“ The intensity, the anxiety depicted, while results far-reaching and momentous are pending, furnish a scene vivid and striking that cannot be pictured. Here is being formed the policy of a party which is to be subjected to the winnowing fan of acute and honest criticism, and by denunciation by opposite parties, striving to obtain the administration of the Government, the fiat of which and the selection of the standard-bearer constitute the claim for the suffrage of the people. They are the preparatory cornerstones of self-government, fashioned and waiting for the verdict of the nation. ”

“ If attached, by prejudice and birth, to the aristocracy, he was yet by reputation and habit attached also to the popular party,—that party more popular than the middle class,—the majority, the masses. ”

“ While boasting of popular government, we suffer ourselves to be led about by self-seeking politicians like a blind man by a scurvy poodle; we made partisanship paramount to patriotism—have reserved the poet's line, and now
"All are for a party and none are for the state." ”

“ The man who swears by party watchwords, and moves amid the burning animosities of party strife, is centering his life in interests which may vanish like an evening cloud. Not in the loud clamors of partisan struggle, are we to find the secret highways which lead to national prosperity and progress, but in that quiet, thoughtful, careful study of the interests and events in which the national life is taking shape and color, and in the application to these of the great principles of righteousness and common sense. ”

“ Assemblies have been elected by universal suffrage, whose tendencies have been reactionary and undemocratic, and who have been supported in this reactionary policy by an effective public opinion. Or the French people have by means of a plebiscite delegated their Sovereign power to an Imperial dictator, whose whole political system was based on a deep suspicion of the source of his own authority. A particular group of political institutions or course of political action may, then, be representative of the popular will, and yet may be undemocratic. ”

“ The plea of bringing the government back to the people was catching and plausible, and it found eager response in the deeply rooted dislike of party machinery, party discipline and party constancy on the part of those who habitually neglect all attention to politics and the political duties of citizenship except during periods of popular excitement and upheaval. ”

“ Under a false notion of fealty these men subject their neck to the party collar and go to the polls yoked with ignorance and crime, and at the heels of some low-browed political dictator they sacrifice their country’s weal on the altar of partisan allegiance. ”

“ Everything, on the other hand, that brings the minority and the majority into presence, before the moment when they must appear in public and pronounce their decision, draws them for a time out of their habitual sphere, and leads them to extend or to correct their ideas. ”

“ The method by which the party in opposition contrives to secure a parliamentary majority for itself is by disparaging the measures of the party in power, and promising greater reforms and better measures than those of their rivals. ”

“ If political parties are what they ought to be—organizations of citizens caused by different currents of opinion as to principles of government or certain questions of public policy, and set on foot and put to the work of persuasion for the purpose of making this or that set of opinions prevail in the conduct of public affairs—they serve a legitimate end. ”

“ The question whether the spoils system, or whether the distribution of offices among its members, will make a political party strong or, which is practically the same thing, save it from defeat, has been answered by recent events in so drastic a fashion as to shake the faith even of the most inveterate spoilsman. ”

“ There is the other curious conceit that the spoils of office are necessary to hold political parties together, to create an interest in public affairs among the people and to give life and spirit to our political contests. ”

“ Altogether the patrician party, though still powerful enough, was at the opening of the sixteenth century already on the decline, the wealthy and unprivileged opposition beginning in its turn to constitute itself into a quasi-aristocratic body as against the mass of the poorer citizens and those outside the pale of municipal rights. ”

“ Still another form of political control, used with perhaps greater skill by Great Britain than by any other country, is what may be called parliamentarism—the use of talk and discussion to delay action, to tire or split opposition, to exhaust the energy of resentment and discontent, to divert or confuse men’s minds. ”