Reform League

“ Two hundred reform leagues in the larger cities united in the National Reform League, with its centre in Philadelphia. After 1905 a new impetus was given to civic reform by the new moral emphasis in business and politics. Better officials were elected and others were reminded that they were responsible to the people more than to the political machine. An extension of reform effort through direct primary nominations came into vogue on the principle that government ought to be by the people themselves: that democracy means self-control. ”

“ The National Civil Service Reform League was founded to discuss the subject of civil service reform to the end of winning for it the support of public opinion; to promote the enactment of reform legislation by Congress, by the State legislatures and by municipal governments, and finally to watch the enforcement of civil service laws and to keep the public truthfully informed thereon. For the performance of these duties it is essential that the League should be a non-partisan body ”

“ They have their reformers: they have men like Francis B. Reeves, who fought with every straight reform movement from the days of the Committee of One Hundred; they have men like Rudolph Blankenburg, who have fought with every reform that promised any kind of relief; there are the Municipal League, with an organization by wards, the Citizens’ Municipal League, the Allied Reform League, and the Law and Order Society; there are young men and veterans; there are disappointed politicians and ambitious men who are not advanced fast enough by the machine. ”

“ The League had nothing to conceal, no object to gain but the government of Remsen City by and for its citizens—well paved, well lighted, clean streets, sanitary houses, good and clean street car service, honest gas, pure water, plenty of good schools—that first of all. The "reform crowd"—the Citizens' Alliance—like every reform party of the past, proposed to do practically the same things. But the League met this with: "Why should we elect an upper class government to do for us what we ought to do for ourselves? ”

“ Archer continued:—
"Thanks be to God, the day passed 'unstained,' a glorious day for Victoria when the SOUTHERN CROSS was first unfolded on Ballaarat; gathering round itself all the oppressed of the world.
"The whole purpose of the meeting was, that a Reform League be formed and fully organised to carry out the clearance of all our grievances, on the old style of the Corn Law League in Great Britain. ”

“ He believed a large number, at least, of the League and its friends and supporters, would say they had tried every means in their power, in the present state of the suffrage, to obtain a redress of their grievances, and they had tried them all in vain; they must now join the ranks of those who were struggling for a radical reform in the representation of the people, convinced at length that the rights of humanity and justice could not otherwise be obtained. ”

“ Those who make this charge do not consider that it is the first duty of this League to hold up the true standard of civil service reform, and to be dissatisfied and to find fault with everything that does not come up to that standard. ”

“ The League always went early into campaign because it pursued a much slower and less expensive method of electioneering than either of the old parties—or than any of the "upper class" reform parties that sprang up from time to time and died away as they accomplished or failed of their purpose—securing recognition for certain personal ambitions not agreeable to the old established bosses. ”

“ The resolutions which we have before cited show clearly how it may be done. An honest Parliament is of course presupposed; for, without an honest legislature to begin with, reform is all moonshine. The first article of the League’s creed is, therefore, a full, free, and fair representation of the whole people. ”

“ This new element, however, was far from benefiting the League; its morals grew infinitely worse; its larcenies became more frequent, and were prosecuted on a larger scale; it became more arrogant in its assumption of exclusive political right on unreconstructed territory; and, finally, assayed, through the medium of politics, to accomplish a social reform that would elevate the ignorant and semi-savage race which it represented to family equality with a class of beings who recognized no title to such a claim, but that of honorable ancestry and a spotless name. ”

“ The Union League Club, a body of earnest Republicans and generous campaign givers, declared for pure government and a reforming Executive. Several county conventions voiced a protest against pledged delegations, and Harper's Weekly, in order to divide Republicans more sharply into Conkling and anti-Conkling advocates, suggested, in a series of aggressive editorials, that a reform Democrat might be preferable to a Republican who represented the low tone of political honour and morality which exposed itself in official life. ”

“ The Reform Bill introduced by Earl Russell's government in 1866 was heartily supported by the league, and after the rejection of that measure by the House of Commons the league renewed its agitation for manhood suffrage and the ballot. ”

“ In 1848 he again attempted, in conjunction with Hume and Cobden, to find some mode of uniting the middle class and the workmen adherents of radical reform, and a conference was assembled which passed a resolution in favour of universal suffrage, but in terms less wide than those adopted by the conference in 1842. The People's League, which was then formed, was so fiercely attacked by the violent chartists that it proved abortive, and was finally dissolved in 1849. ”

“ Richard Watson Gilder, the Anti-Spoils League was set on foot for the purpose of opening communication and facilitating correspondence and, in case of need, concert of action with the friends of Civil Service Reform throughout the country, and when, in a short space of time, about 10,000 citizens sent in their adhesion, representing nearly every State and Territory of the Union, and, in them, the most enlightened and influential classes of society. ”

“ Let them silence other conservatives who say that reform has already been too extensive, by petitioning for the ballot and for short parliaments. Let no man be afraid of embarrassing the ministry by such demands. If honestly determined to introduce cheap and good government, it will be strengthened rather than weakened by an universal call for those practical reforms which the country expects to follow the measure that they have had the merit of originating, and, aided by the people, of carrying, in spite of borough-mongering and aristocratical influence. ”

“ The Good Government club understands that if the moral tone of our politics, national or local, is to be lifted up, the demoralizing element of party spoil must be done away with. The Municipal League understands that if our large municipalities are to be no longer cesspools of corruption, if our municipal governments are to be made honest and businesslike, if our police forces are to be kept clear of thugs and thieves, the appointments to places in the municipal service must be withdrawn from the influence of party bosses and ward ruffians, and must be strictly governed by the merit system. ”

“ There was no great town in the United Kingdom, throwing a powerful influence upon the agitation in favour of the Reform Bill which more than Manchester, kept steadily in view the practical measure that might be expected as the result of an amendment of representative system. In other places there was a laudable impatience of the absurdity, apparent to all who possessed a portion of common sense, of permitting a mound of earth to send two members to Parliament, while great manufacturing or commercial towns, each the centre and market of important districts, sent none ”

“ The House of Lords, composed exclusively of landowners, and independent of the people's suffrages, was not likely to re-echo the acknowledgment of distress occasioned by selfish legislation, nor was the House of Commons, constituted by the Reform Bill to give a preponderance to the landed interest, and elected at a period when great distrust prevailed amongst reformers and free traders as to the intentions of the whig administration, likely to adopt the liberal commercial policy recommended. ”

“ To him citizenship was a religion, and patriotism a never-dying passion,—a patriotism that would purify and sustain the nation for the benefit not only of its own people but for all the peoples of the earth. ”

“ One such movement defeated but makes way for another. Proof, this, that the spirit of true reform is virile and the heart of the nation pure. The progress made, in numbers and organization, before the seeds of decay were sown in the United Labor party, the Union Labor party, the Greenback-Labor party, the People's party of 1884, and various third-party movements, testify to the readiness of earnest thousands to respond, even on the slightest promise of victory, to the call for radical reform. ”

“ If, Sir, the present elective franchise can thus, by interested partisans on the one hand, and political demagogues on the other, be made the sportive instrument of demoralising all consistency of conduct in the virtuous, and can thus be dragged forth to inflame the unholy passions of the blind and vicious, what must be its operations when the long anticipated Reform Bill extends its privileges to a more extensive, uneducated, but not less dangerous class of such like free and independent electors? ”

“ We will not be governed by men who look upon us as unfit to participate in government. The mission of this Union League is not ended. Not only is eternal vigilance the price of liberty; eternal struggle is the price of liberty. ”

“ Any little bundle of human beings, however small, illiterate, and unimportant, provided only that it was a law unto itself and waved a flag about and insisted upon a cantankerous independence, was regarded as a possible unit by the pedants who devised the League. Any body of people, however numerous, intelligent, and significant in human affairs, provided it had grouped itself into any other larger political aggregation, ceased, on the other hand, to be anything but a merged participator in the League’s affairs. ”

“ Was there anything so peculiar in the nature of those bodies of freemen, or in the rights which they possessed, as to induce us to retain and perpetuate them? He knew of nothing of the kind. If this had been simply a question of altering the constituency fixed by the Reform Bill, though he thought the freemen as a body more liable to corruption than other classes of voters, he would have been for retaining them; but now that they were constructing; a new corporate right, with a view to the better government of towns, it was necessary to remodel the body. ”

“ I fancy that he has gone to present himself as a candidate for the new Parliament. People are all in motion for this purpose; but it seems that Reform will triumph, and the anti-reformers will get more and more into the mire. God forbid that this Bill should not pass—there would certainly be a revolution. ”

“ The hopes of political radicals ran high in these days, and the National Union took a great part in fomenting the general excitement. The members were bitterly opposed to the Reform Bill of 1832, which, was in truth but a very small instalment of democracy, and their conduct and language increased in violence as the prospects of a middle-class victory in the reform campaign became brighter. ”

“ It remains to give every adult a vote in the election of Councillors; to shorten their term of office to a year; to pay the Councillors, so that the public may have a right to the whole of their working time; to give the Councils power to take and hold land—a reform already asked for by the Liberal and Radical Union, a body not consciously Socialist; and to remove all legal restrictions, so as to leave them as free to act [139] corporately as an individual is to act individually. ”

“ It would indeed be a dead letter if the constituency of England returned anti-reformers—men who had exerted all their power to prevent reform in the church, the law, and the state. The Reform Bill would prove no good to the country unless they returned to Parliament, which the King’s writ had just issued to assemble, men prepared to carry out into beneficial effect ulterior measures, which its framers and supporters contemplated, when by their efforts it became the law of the land. (Cheers.) ”

“ In spite of rotten boroughs, close corporations, the opposition of the majority of the territorial aristocracy, and the panic of thousands of timid people, who imagined that the British Constitution was imperilled, the Reformers came back in strength, and at least a hundred who had fought the Bill in the late Parliament were shut out from a renewal of the struggle, whilst out of eighty-two county members that were returned, only six were hostile to Reform. ”

“ Absolutely the only hope of radical reform lies in a straight-out, aggressive and fearless fight upon both the old parties, which in turn have had control of the Government, and which have played into each other’s hands in forging the chains of class legislation which now bind and burden the Common People. ”

“ FROM the outset to the end of its career the Socialist League was harassed with internal trouble. The members of the League had, as my readers will remember, split away from the Social Democratic Federation, chiefly on the ground that as revolutionary Socialists they could take no part in parliamentary agitation—at any rate not until Socialism had so far ripened in the country that Parliament could be made the means of precipitating the social revolution. ”