Coalowner

“ Saturday.—Heard at the Club that if the Coalition is not better supported in their attempts to carry out progressive reforms and combat the forces of Revolution and Anarchy, they will form themselves into a new party and go to the country. Locally we are to have, in addition to the retiring Coalitionist, a Free Liberal candidate, a Labour Party candidate, a couple of Independent candidates, a People's Party candidate, a National Party candidate, a Modern Party candidate, a Britannic Party candidate, and an Efficiency Party candidate. ”

“ And it so happens, that four only of the largest will have a majority of the whole votes in the House of Representatives. Should the Representatives or People, therefore, of the smaller States, oppose at any time a reasonable addition of members, a coalition of a very few States will be sufficient to overrule the opposition; a coalition, which, notwithstanding the rivalship and local prejudices which might prevent it on ordinary occasions, would not fail to take place, when not merely prompted by common interest, but justified by equity and the principles of the Constitution. ”

“ But an impartial historian must record the opinion that the coalition was perfectly justified by existing political conditions, that had it not taken place, a stable government would in all probability have been for some time impossible, and that the time had come for the reconstruction of parties with a broad generous policy which would ignore issues at last dead, and be more in harmony with modern requirements. ”

“ The Revolution itself was, indeed, brought about by a Coalition, in which Tories, surrendering their doctrines of submission, arrayed themselves by the side of Whigs, in defence of their common liberties. Another Coalition, less important in its object and effects, but still attended with results most glorious to the country, was that which took place in the year 1757, when, by a union of parties from whose dissension much mischief had flowed, the interests of both king and people were reconciled, and the good genius of England triumphed at home and abroad. ”

“ But in America, on the contrary, such a coalition means, raise our wages, or we go to the West. Every coalition which does not amount to this in the minds of the associates, is merely the whim of the moment, an affair of little importance. This is the reason why coalitions, which in Europe are often able to shake the firmest fabric, present no real danger to the public peace in this country, where authority is disarmed. This is the reason why European countries, burdened with an excess of population, need for their safety and welfare a West, into which each may overflow after its own manner. ”

“ In my opinion it is necessary, for this purpose, that the government be composed of representatives of all those parts of the population that are not interested in the restoration of the old order. What is called a coalition Ministry is necessary. Our comrades, the Socialists, acknowledging the necessity of entering the government, can and should set forth definite conditions, definite demands. But there should be no demands that would be unacceptable to the representatives of other classes, to the spokesmen of other parts of the population. ”

“ But the cry of 'coalition and faction' is perfectly absurd, and nothing more than the mere jargon which all parties employ as their battle cry. There has been no coalition whatever, and that those who clamour against it very well know. The only coalition of which there has been any question has been one between Gladstone (with or without the other Peelites) and Disraeli and Derby, but that has hitherto been in posse rather than in esse, and it would have been much more plausible to raise the cry on the Budget than on the Canton question. ”

“ No system of that kind can be formed, which will not leave room fully sufficient for healing coalitions: but no coalition which, under the specious name of independency, carries in its bosom the unreconciled principles of the original discord of parties, ever was, or will be, an healing coalition. Nor will the mind of our sovereign ever know repose, his kingdom settlement, or his business order, in efficiency or grace with his people, until things are established upon the basis of some set of men, who are trusted by the public, and who can trust one another. ”

“ The Coalition! Ay, “the murdered Coalition!” The gentleman asks if I were led or frighted into this debate by the spectre of the Coalition. “Was it the ghost of the murdered Coali [Pg 123] tion,” he exclaims, “which haunted the member from Massachusetts; and which, like the ghost of Banquo, would never down?” “The murdered Coalition!” Sir, this charge of a coalition, in reference to the late administration, is not original with the honorable member. It did not spring up in the Senate. Whether as a fact, as an argument, or as an embellishment, it is all borrowed. ”

“ A coalition of all the first men in the country would, at that moment, have been as popular as the coalition of 1783 had been unpopular. Alone in the kingdom the King looked with perfect complacency on a cabinet in which no man superior to himself in genius was to be found, and was so far from being willing to admit all his ablest subjects to office that he was bent on excluding them all. ”

“ In the general union of the states with one another, I do not see a coalition, a melting of all the parts together, so as to make the body one and homogeneous. It is only an aggregate of parts, always too separate, and which have a continual tendency to divide themselves, from the diversity of their laws, their manners, their opinions ”

“ What would be, perhaps, sufficient at once to re-establish confidence would be for the king to make the coalesced powers acknowledge the independence of the French nation, cease from all farther hostilities, and withdraw the troops that menace our frontiers. It is impossible that a very great part of the nation should not be persuaded that the king has it in his power to put an end to the coalition; and while that coalition continues and places the public liberty in a state of peril, it is in vain to flatter the king that confidence can revive. ”

“ These institutions had been permitted to exist and develop only because they were controlled by the more conservative groups. The cooperative societies represented more truly the idea of coalition. Here in the cooperative movement the leaders of political liberalism had always noted with relief that one was gradually attaining the end toward which they knew they must work—the organic union between the so-called Intelligentsia, and the "people," meaning the broader, democratic classes. ”

“ On both sides we have the corporate and the individual flavour; on both sides we have those individuals-by-courtesy whose flavour is almost wholly corporate; on both sides the corporate flavour is one that we find intensely disagreeable. In the coalition we find it noxious, in the opposition no worse than irritating. No doubt this is because we recognise a tendency to take the coalition seriously, while the opposition is held to be ridiculous. But both the coalition and the opposition—we use both terms in their corporate sense—are unmistakably the product of the present age. ”

“ They had never received, they had never given, the price of infamy. Thus the coalition gathered to itself support from all the high and all the low parts of human nature, and was strong with the whole united strength of virtue and of Mammon.
Pitt and Newcastle were co-ordinate chief ministers. The subordinate places had been filled on the principle of including in the Government every party and shade of party, the avowed Jacobites alone excepted, nay, every public man who, from his abilities or from his situation, seemed likely to be either useful in office or formidable in opposition. ”

“ Remember that this coalition of a whole canton and of a little town against a general, who, in spite of his rash courage, had escaped the dangers of actual war, is going on in other districts against other men who seek only to do what is right by those districts. It is a coalition which to-day threatens every man, the man of genius, the statesman, the modern agriculturalist,—in short, all innovators. ”

“ It was the municipal and Jacobin organisation of France that forced the coalition of Europe to retreat. But in each group, if we look more closely, there were two or three individuals more capable than the rest, who, whether leaders or led, executed decisions and had the appearance of leaders, but who (if, for instance, we read the proceedings of the people's clubs) seem to us to have drawn their strength far more from their group than from themselves. ”

“ The secret of the power of caucus and convention is, general want of time on the part of the community. Your honest and shrewd Western farmer, not having himself the leisure to select his candidate, is fain to let caucus or convention choose for him. In practice, however, the evil is far from great: the party caucus, for its own interest, will, on the whole, select the fittest candidate available, and, in any case, dares not, except perhaps in New York City, fix its choice upon a man of known bad character. ”

“ Instead of the artificial attempts to divide all possible ideas and plans between two great parties, modern legislatures in advanced nations tend to develop smaller and smaller minority groups, while government is carried on by temporary coalitions. For a time we inveighed against this and sought to consider it a perversion of the only possible method of practical democracy. Today we are gradually coming to realize that government by temporary coalition of small and diverse groups may easily become the most efficient method of expressing the will of man and of setting the human soul free. ”

“ In grave emergencies, such as a state of war, communities often draw together in a political coalition because the community of interest transcends ordinary divisions. There is, however, one absolutely essential, prerequisite if a coalition is to succeed. ”

“ There is nothing changed, if, while the French nation demands nothing, but to remain at peace with all Europe, an unjust coalition do not oblige her to defend, as it did in 1792, her will, and her rights, and her independence, and the sovereign of her choice. ”

“ Deserted by the bulk of the Labour Party, and by the old leaders of the Liberal Party, Mr. Lloyd George had to form his Coalition out of the combination of those Liberals who remained faithful to him, and the undivided forces of the Unionist Party. He and Mr. Bonar Law issued a joint manifesto, and letters passed between them which defined the Coalition policy. It was necessarily a policy displeasing to both extreme wings. For it is the essence of a coalition that nobody can get all his own way. At home, as abroad, Mr. Lloyd George had to compromise. ”

“ No coalition of which history has preserved the memory has had an abler chief than William. But even William often contended in vain against those vices which are inherent in the nature of all coalitions. No undertaking which requires the hearty and long continued cooperation of many independent states is likely to prosper. Jealousies inevitably spring up. Disputes engender disputes. Every confederate is tempted to throw on others some part of the burden which he ought himself to bear. Scarcely one honestly furnishes the promised contingent. ”

“ If the union of the two factions created the probability, the union of three seemed to insure certainty, and the negotiations for a coalition, therefore, extended to the adherents of Bell and Everett. Amid the sharp contest of ideas and principles which divided the country, such an arrangement was by no means easy; yet in a large voting population there is always a percentage of party followers on whom the obligations of party creeds sit lightly. Gradually, from talk of individuals and speculations of newspapers, the intrigue proceeded to a coquetting between rival conventions. ”

“ Every argument which can be urged against coalitions, as such, is also an argument against party connexions. Every argument by which party connexions can be defended, is a defence of coalitions. What coalitions are to parties, parties are to individuals. ”

“ How long was it, even with a clear perception of that danger, before an effective coalition could be formed? How often did one power stand by, unmoved and indifferent to the fate of its neighbor, although the destruction of that neighbor removed the only barrier to an attack upon itself? ”

“ It is the State itself in its intensest federal union; yet at the same moment the Guardian and Representative of all personal Individuality. For the Church is the Shrine of Morality; and in Morality alone the citizen asserts and reclaims his personal independence, his integrity. Our outward acts are efficient, and most often possible, only by coalition. As an efficient power, the agent, is but a fraction of unity: he becomes an integer only in the recognition and performance of the Moral Law. ”

“ But if the Senator from Virginia means to assert that the twenty-four States form but one community, with a single sovereign power as to the objects of the Union, it will be but the revival of the old question of whether the Union is a union between States as distinct communities, or a mere aggregate of the American people as a mass of individuals ”