Charter party

“ The new charter comes up before the coming Legislature for approval in January, and that instrument provides for another election next fall, to fill all City and County offices. ...
I don't want to stay in politics, two years in the office will be long enough for me. I hope that I shall make a creditable record. I can foresee that strong pressure will be brought to bear upon me to act with the Examiner in making things disagreeable for the corporations, and I will have no easy task in gaining the approval of my own party, and of my conscience and judgment at the same time. ”

“ But we can hardly suppose that a small or a new political organization could seriously urge that its interests would be advanced if it were forced by the State to establish all of the elaborate statewide, county-by-county, organizational paraphernalia required of a 'political party' as a condition for conducting a primary election. ”

“ Will the alteration of the mode of appointing one branch of our provincial legislature furnish so much as an excuse for it, considering that our politicians, by their intrigues and machinations, had rendered the assembly incapable of answering the purpose of government, which is protection, and our charter was become as inefficacious as an old ballad? ”

“ THOSE who speculate upon the formation of a new party, or gravely propose it, seem to suppose that a great party is organized as a corporation is chartered. But that does not seem to us to be the way in which a party arises. In our own history party divisions began during the administration of Washington, and the Federal and the National Republican parties continued until the former disappeared, leaving, in the Monroe era of good feeling, no immediate successor. ”

“ They are but faint sketches of the estates of parliament. The houses of representatives, or Burgesses, have not all the powers of the house of commons; in the charter governments they have no more than what is expressly granted by their several charters. The first charters granted to this province did not empower the assembly to tax the people at all. Our council boards are as destitute of the constitutional authority of the house of lords, as their several members are of the noble independence, and splendid appendages of peerage. ”

“ Neither should you think that I wish to claim any standing in the Republican Party. My way of looking at things will probably never have your approval, but I may, perhaps, succeed in making it intelligible to you. I believe that a party organization is not an end in itself, but merely a means for the attainment of public ends. I, therefore, do not worship a political party as a divinity entitled to my devotion under all circumstances, but regard it simply as an organization of citizens standing together for public objects on which they agree. ”

“ The one desires to preserve an entire independence of the executive and legislative branches on each other, and the dependence of both on the same source—the free election of the people. The other party wishes to lessen the dependence of the Executive and of one branch of the Legislature on the people, some by making them hold for life, some hereditary, and some even for giving the Executive an influence by patronage or corruption over the remaining popular branch, so as to reduce the elective franchise to its minimum. ”

“ Next the attack was positive, in the interests of the people at large, endeavoring through the official ballot to deprive parties of those artificial and factitious means of success which depend only upon the machinery of organization. Later the problem is the internal organization of the parties themselves, the legalized primary, the very heart of the party situation. The party primary is peculiar to American self-government. The primary is democratic in its origin. It has become oligarchical through the necessity of organization. ”

“ It should be desired that parties should act in distinct organizations, in accordance with avowed principles, under easily recognized leaders, in order that the voters might be able to declare by their ballots, not only their condemnation of any past policy, by withdrawing all support from the party responsible for it; but also and particularly their will as to the future administration of the government, by bringing into power a party pledged to the adoption of an acceptable policy. ”

“ Unquestionably Congress is not such a tribunal. There are, no doubt, men in the Senate and in the House of Representatives who in the discharge of important duties endeavor to divest their minds of all party bias. But on the whole inasmuch as the members of the National Legislature owe their places to the instrumentality of party organization, it is not unnatural that in many respects party interest and spirit should have a strong influence in shaping their opinions as well as their actions. ”

“ We recall at this point the wording of the statute invoked by the respondents. 'Every political party in this State through its State Executive Committee shall have the power to prescribe the qualifications of its own members and shall in its own way determine who shall be qualified to vote or otherwise participate in such political party.' Whatever inherent power a state political party has to determine the content of its membership resides in the state convention. ”

“ The state, as its highest tribunal holds, though it has guaranteed the liberty to organize political parties, may legislate for their governance when formed, and for the method whereby they may nominate candidates, but must do so with full recognition of the right of the party to exist, to define its membership, and to adopt such policies as to it shall seem wise. ”

“ Thus, any political body that wins as much as 20% support at an election becomes a 'political party' with its attendant ballot position rights and primary election obligations, and any 'political party' whose support at the polls falls below that figure reverts to the status of a 'political body' with its attendant nominating petition responsibilities and freedom from primary election duties. ”

“ You ask my opinion as to the course which the approaching convention ought to pursue. Whilst I do not feel myself competent to state in detail what ought to be their proceedings, yet one thing is certain; they ought, neither directly nor indirectly, to break up the organization of the old Democratic party by forming anything like a new party. Leaving this as it is, and must ever remain, they ought to confine themselves pretty much to the question of reconstruction, and to the admission of Senators and Representatives from the Southern States. ”

“ We will not affiliate in any degree with any of the old parties, but, in all cases and localities, will organize anew, as united National men—nominate for office and official positions only such persons as are clearly believers in and identified with this our sacred cause; and, irrespective of creed, color, place of birth, or past condition of political or other servitude, vote only for men who entirely abandon old party lines and organizations. ”

“ Their appeal is direct to the constituencies, and it is among the rank and file of their party in the country that they find their strength. The new system is not without its dangers. If it is a more efficient check upon abuse of the common people than the old, it offers less freedom to the independent member, and where we once contrived party as a means of controlling our government, we are now rather inclined to cast about for some contrivance which will control our party. ”

“ We think that this statutory system for the selection of party nominees for inclusion on the general election ballot makes the party which is required to follow these legislative directions an agency of the state in so far as it determines the participants in a primary election. The party takes its character as a state agency from the duties imposed upon it by state statutes; the duties do not become matters of private law because they are performed by a political party. ”

“ The questions of education, saloon regulation, taxation, corporation control, bank guarantee, pure food, or the tariff on foreigners or foreign goods, have now no certain standing and support in the legislature or before the people.
By making an issue and division inside the party lines, of "assembly" or "anti- assembly" for the suggestion of candidates, a political party is "slaughtered in the house of its friends." ”

“ If that wise rule be followed by the voters of 1920 and the subsequent years, they will prudently judge from the past record of the Republican party that it is the party to which the future interests of the nation are most safely o be committed. They will affiliate themselves with it, with a serene assurance that so long as its principles and practices prevail, “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” ”

“ But a state legislature, under the influence of their senators, who would have their fullest confidence, or under the influence of ambitious or popular characters, or in times of popular commotion, and when faction and party spirit run high, would introduce such regulations as would render the rights of the people insecure and of little value. They might make an unequal and partial division of the states into districts for the election of representatives, or they might even disqualify one third of the electors. Without these powers in Congress, the people can have no remedy ”

“ The lesser committees—county, city, district, judicial, senatorial, congressional, and others—are even more rigorously controlled by law.
So the issuing of the party platform, the principles on which it must stand or fall, has been touched by this process of ossification. Few States retain the state convention in its original vigor. In all States where primaries are held for state nominations, the emasculated and subdued convention is permitted to write the party platform. But not so in some States. ”

“ In promoting this legislation, it was [Pg 230] argued that, if citizens were assured the right to be enrolled in the party to which they desired to belong and to vote at primaries and freely to exercise their choice for delegates to conventions, they would be stimulated to take part in the primaries, and that this would result in preventing party nominations for office from being controlled by those who made politics their business or used improper or corrupt methods. Hence the primary reform measures introduced by legislation in our state in the nineties. ”

“ They recognize and support simple, straightforward, inartificial party government, under a standing committee of responsible party leaders, bringing legislature and executive side by side in intimate but open coöperation; whilst we, preferring to keep Congress and the departments at arm's length, permit only a less direct government by party majorities, checking party action by a complex legislative machinery of two score and eight composite, semi-ministerial Committees. The English take their parties straight,—we take ours mixed. ”

“ The question staring us in the face in American politics to-day is—What possible good can direct government do us if party organization remains in control? The movement for direct primaries, popular choice of United States senators, presidential primaries, initiative and referendum, the recall etc., will bear little fruit unless something is done at the same time to break the power of the party. ”

“ In the Legislative Assembly there are the Government party, consisting of the Colonial Secretary and the Attorney General, who prove their loyalty and devotion by adhering to His Excellency the Governor on every division, and (according to general belief) would rather vote against their own measures than against the representative of their Queen. Then there is the popular party, consisting of the popular member, who speaks at random on either side of the debate, but invariably votes against the Government, in order to maintain inviolate the integrity of his principles. ”

“ The party machinery enables the individuals who dominate the Cabinet to dominate also the only effective part of the Legislature. Whether they proceed by Resolution or by the more usual constitutional method of Statute, the result is practically the same: the wealth of a great empire lies as a rich spoil at the mercy of the party majority that controls Executive Government and House of Commons alike. ”

“ Congress, in truth, is now little more than a place for formally ratifying and recording the decisions at which the party having the majority has arrived in caucus, where the only real deliberation takes place. As the minority in caucus is bound by party law to vote with the majority in the legislative hall, it often happens that a small minority of the whole Legislature passes a law or carries an election. Take away party, and we see that the whole of the present system of parliamentary government would crumble. ”

“ The question is, whether we shall live longer in a Union in which a Party, hostile to us in every respect, has the power in Congress, in the Executive department, and in the Electoral Colleges—a Party who will have the power even in the Judiciary. We think it is not safe. We say that each State has the clear indisputable right to withdraw if she sees fit ”

“ Resolved, that in view of our repeated failures to reform the State Government by the policy of co-operation with the Conservative element of the Republican Party, who professed the same object, and of recent events we recognize the absolute and immediate necessity of reorganizing the Democratic party to restore an honest and economical government. ”