Contestant

“ But when we try to settle our differences by a bloodless warfare, in which the ballot is one's ammunition, you cry down with politics. A political contest is nothing but a bit of supreme arbitration, for which you peace people are always clamoring, by the court of last resort, the people. ”

“ In a conversation with the former, at the conclusion of the discussion, I told him that, judging from the speeches, and the responses they received from the crowd, I thought his chances must be altogether the best for securing the election.
"Ah," said he, "it won't do to judge by the speeches, or to depend upon them to secure an election. My opponent is the hardest sort of a man to beat. He is powerful on the still hunt." ”

“ The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery. ”

“ You whose courage the enemies of the Constitution insolently flatter themselves that they have shaken; you whose consciences they try each day, to alarm by styling the love of liberty as the spirit of faction — as if you could have forgotten that a despotic court also gave the name of factionists to the representatives of the people who went to take the oath of the Tennis-Court [2] ”

“ As a matter of course I do not expect Democratic politicians and orators to give us that fairness of judgment in the heat of an election contest which they could not deny us during the repose of a previous period, and which they will not deny us when this contest is over; for it is a common experience that partisan spirit will, under the excitement of the campaign, call a man a villain to-day whose worth was recognized yesterday, and whose merit will again be admitted to-morrow. ”

“ Our elections were more prolific in duels than any other public meetings: they very seldom originated at a horse-race, cock-fight, hunt, or at any place of amusement: folks then had pleasure in view, and “something else to do” than to quarrel: but at all elections, or at assizes, or, in fact, at any place of business, almost every man, without any very particular or assignable reason, immediately became a violent partisan, and frequently a furious enemy to somebody else; and gentlemen often got themselves shot before they could tell what they were fighting about. ”

“ The winner takes the loser's place,
With all its obligations.
ALL. How neatly lawyers state a case!
The winner takes the loser's place,
With all its obligations!
LUD. I see. The man who draws the lowest card—
NOT. Dies, ipso facto, a social death. He loses all his
civil rights—his identity disappears—the Revising Barrister
expunges his name from the list of voters, and the winner takes
his place, whatever it may be, discharges all his functions, and
adopts all his responsibilities. ”

“ These are the amenities of electioneering; but a man who enters on a political campaign expecting fair treatment from his opponents is indeed walking in a vain shadow. The ordinary rules of fairplay and straightforward conduct are forgotten at an election. In a political contest people say and do a great many things of which in every-day life they would be heartily ashamed. An election-agent of the old school once said to me in the confidence of after-dinner claret, "For my own part, when I go into a fight, I go in to win, and I'm not particular to a shade or two." ”

“ I rode among the mountain fastnesses like the "Knight of the woeful figure," mounted on my prancing "Rozenante," everywhere charging the windmill of the opposing party, and wherever I drew rein the mountaineers swarmed from far and near to witness the bloodless battle of the contending candidates in the arena of joint discussion. My learned competitor, bearing the shield of "protection to American labor," and armed to the teeth with mighty argument, hurled himself upon me with the fury of a lion. ”

“ In a panic the agent has collected every possible voter, including the maimed, the blind, and even the idiotic, and they are attesting before the officer, while protests against their validity as voters are being urged by the opposite party's lawyer. The candidates themselves are on the hustings, and in the distance Britannia's coach has broken down! ”

“ Only before the elections, all kinds of people come with all kinds of speeches, act neighborly to them, harangue them, urge them, and bribe them,—then there is the election, and everything is quiet again. ”

“ A supporter of the adverse political party, referring to the contest, stated as a merit in his friends that they had succeeded in outwitting their opponents, for on one occasion they had got a man on their side who had unluckily just broken his arm, whom they succeeded in pairing off against a sound man of their adversaries. ”

“ In our political contests the opposing candidates use as hard language about one another as the same class of men do in political contests in the United States; they may say anything they please except that the man they are denouncing is the descendant of a transported convict. ”

“ An old soldier having been brought up to vote at an election at the expense of one of the candidates, voted for his opponent, and when reproached for his conduct, replied, "Always quarter upon the enemy, my lads; always quarter upon the enemy." ”

“ In politics, people are no more held back by scruples than they are in sport, and we hear every day of cases where competitors in all kinds of contests seek to improve their chances by some trickery or other. ”

“ Or, if he uses force, because we reject him as a candidate, we may have to fight and he may begin at once before we are ready, or when his friends fail to get his candidature allowed at the elections in accordance with his legal privilege. He may resort to arms solely on account of his rejection as a candidate, or for a further reason, if a tribune through using obstructionist tactics or an appeal to popular feeling incur a censure or a limitation of power or suspension or expulsion from office, or if some tribune fly to him with a tale of expulsion. ”

“ Many a man, therefore, who receives his election as a compliment from the voters, if he understood the motives of their action, would throw up his office in disgust; for in a large majority of cases, the popular choice, so far from being an assertion of the candidate's peculiar fitness to be singled out from among his brethren, is only a declaration that neither talent nor character entitles him to the distinction. ”

“ While the great mass of its supporters would be found among those who are compelled to fight the battle of life unaided by those powerful allies—social position, political influence and money—men whose only sword is the ballot, and whose only shield, the jury. ”

“ But that a deputy or a senator or a president of the republic or no matter which of the strange comedians who seek elective office of whatever kind finds voters, that is to say the undreamed of being, the improbable martyr who feeds you on his bread, clothes you in his wool, fattens you on his flesh, and enriches you with his money with the sole aim of receiving in exchange for his prodigality truncheon blows on the neck, kicks in the behind, and shots in the chest. ”

“ But to men aspiring to be members, or to those who having been once fortunate have again to fight the battle without assurance of success, the coming election must be matter of dread concern. Oh, how delightful to hear that the long-talked-of rival has declined the contest, and that the course is clear! ”

“ A political contest involving momentous consequences, fraught with feverish apprehension, and creating aggressiveness so intense as to approach bitterness and passion has been waged throughout our land and determined by the decree of free and independent suffrage without disturbance of our tranquillity or the least sign of weakness in our national structure. ”

“ The more he represses it, the more unjust he necessarily is. Internal shame and external circumstances may bring the contest to a close in a week, or a day; but, it has been a contest for years, and is only fought out after a long balance of victory. ”

“ And though a popular election is liable to some objections, yet, from the mode in which it is generally conducted amongst them, they are but as the small dust of the balance, when weighed against the sterling value of the privilege which it involves and secures. The argument employed by Dissenters in support of this practice is, in their judgment, quite conclusive. ”

“ If the voter cast his ballot against his own convictions, and in accordance with the will of another, what matters it whether he be coerced by a soldier with a musket or a station agent with a freight bill? ”

“ In the courtroom the parties jostled each other at the polls, and the candidates, side by side upon the Justice's Bench, watched the day go now this way and now that. Their partisans they must acceptably thank, and they must be quick of wit with their adversaries. Fatigue did not count, nor hoarseness from much speaking, nor an undercurrent of consciousness that there were, after all, more parties than two, more principles than those they advocated, more colours than black and white, more epithets than hero and villain. They must act in their moment, and accept its excitement. ”

“ If the insult be of a serious character, it will be the duty of the second of the challenger, to say, in reply to the second of the challengee: "We have been deeply wronged, and if you are not disposed to repair the injury, the contest must continue." And if the challengee offers nothing by way of reparation, the fight continues until one or the other of the principals is hit. ”

“ Seldom has an election been contested with such prodigality of partisan fury. The rhetoric of abuse was vigorous and unrestrained; the campaign lie active and ingenious; the arraignment of class against class sedulous and adroit, and the excitement most violent and memorable. If a weapon of political warfare failed to be handled with craft and with courage, its skilful use was unknown. ”

“ JONES, the candidate for the office of Vituperator, then cleared his throat savagely.
"My friends," he began, "BROWN, the opposing candidate, is a scamp, and he knows it. If any man says he isn't, he is. (Loud cheers.) Do you ask me to prove it? Prove an axiom! (Applause.) Who but a damned rascal would run against me at election? ”

“ The public mind has, by degrees, drifted into an acceptance of this doctrine; and thus an election has become a fierce, selfish struggle between the ‘ins’ and the ‘outs,’ the one striving to keep and the other to gain the prize of office. ”

“ It had been conclusively proven by the news papers that the opponent of the candidate whose cause they espoused was a man absolutely unfit, mentally and morally, for the high place he sought, and whose administration, were he elected, would stand forever as a black page in the nation's history. ”

“ A strong local man was already in possession of the field, and the contest turned less on popular politics than on social influence, and the jealousies and rivalries of parties which formerly acted together. ”

“ A curious tradition of privileged insolence, which runs through all English history from the days when great men kept Jesters and the Universities had their Terræ Filii, asserts itself, by immemorial usage, at an election. People who would be perfectly civil if one called on them in the ordinary way, and even rapturously grateful if they could sell one six boxes of lucifers or a pound of toffee, permit themselves a freedom of speech to the suppliant candidate, which tests the fibre of his manhood. ”

“ Where there are mere contests, there are some wounds: fists make reel, heels kick like butting rams, boxing-gloves mangle, whips leave gashes. Yet there will be no one reproaching the superintendent of the contest for exposing men to outrage. ”

“ Having in their turn become the assailants, the issue of the contest is frequently so much in their favour, that they do not leave any one of the adversaries to carry to his nation the tidings of the defeat. ”

“ I remember standing at the polls one day when the anger of the political contest gave a certain grimness to the faces of the independent electors, and a good man at my side, looking on the people, remarked, "I am satisfied that the largest part of these men, on either side, mean to vote right." ”

“ If he is rejected, he is indignant that the lodge has been deprived of this pecuniary accession, and forthwith he sets to work to reverse, if possible, the decision of the ballot box, and by a volunteer defense of the rejected candidate, and violent denunciations of those who opposed him, he seeks to alarm the timid and disgust the intelligent, so that, on a reconsideration, they may be induced to withdraw their opposition. ”

“ That is, of course, the final point in that theory of our institutions. The victorious party in an election is regarded as having conquered the country; it takes the spoils and gives or allows to the minority as a boon, given in contempt, what it sees fit. ”

“ But the misfortune is, that in the practice of the world, we see but few examples of such disinterested and upright conduct, even in cases where the merits of candidates are unequal; but on the contrary, whenever an opposition is set on foot, the favourers of each candidate, are more occupied in canvassing suffrages, than in studying questions, and more busied in examining the connections of voters, than books of faculty. ”

“ We find men and parties protesting, declaiming, complaining of what is done, and which they say is not "right," but only force. An election decides that those shall have power who will execute an act of policy. ”

“ How the crowds had cheered the hackneyed platitudes, the blatant patriotic appeals, the malevolent caricature of opponents! Something unspeakably trivial, vulgar, and evil in it all reminded him of tired children when the romping begins to grow ill-natured. ”