Moderate politics

“ They have all helped both to fix our strongest and most constant interests upon politics, and to ingrain the mental habits proper to politics, far more deeply than any other, into our general constitution and inmost character. ”

“ Some men don’t like it. But the best men—a growing number of men, I find—are supporting me.
You are right not to make a new political party. You are equally right to try to lift and raise and improve the platforms of both the big political parties by joining them. See that you send neither windbags nor carpetbaggers to represent you.
The big contribution you can make to politics and national life is to face and tackle the moral standard. Insist upon a single standard of morality—not by lowering our standard; but by raising the men’s standard to that of women. ”

“ Moreover, the adoption of social policies has increased the powers of government and, therefore, it has more and more come to be seen that popular control of government is necessary. At the same time the making of campaign issues out of social policies has at once in itself made all the people more important in politics. ”

“ To invite the antagonisms of active politics without the power to submerge them by shaping a policy which should appeal overwhelmingly to the people, would be to impair the repose and comfort for which I have surrendered all public honors. I cannot be induced to meddle at all, even in the way of private advice or opinion, except under the influence of patriotic and friendly motives. ”

“ What States would not adventure upon as policy, he espoused as policy and humanity both. Addressing himself from the first to the great middle class, whose principles are less corrupted by party politics, in whom the free destiny of peoples is lodged, he is gathering the elements of power and authority which, becoming formidable in ability if not in numbers, must secure the country's confidence, and in due time have political dictation and rule. ”

“ It cannot be repeated too often that your peculiar power consists in your standing with that public opinion and nothing else. When we spoke at the Reform Club banquet about the “moral forces in politics,” we meant just this. You cannot try to carry your points by making concessions to the spoils politicians without being ultimately beaten, for you leave the ground on which you are strong. ”

“ They must look in future, not to their leaders, but to their constituents, for the principles which were to direct their conduct. The people were brought into direct touch with politics, and asserted their right, not only to censure their representatives by unseating them at elections, but positively to influence their actions while they sat in the House. ”

“ Whoever is capable of feeling any common interest with his kind, or with his country, or with his city, is interested in politics; and to be interested in them, and not wish for a voice in them, is an impossibility. The possession and the exercise of political, and among others of electoral, rights, is one of the chief instruments both of moral and of intellectual training for the popular mind; and all governments must be regarded as extremely imperfect, until every one who is required to obey the laws, has a voice, or the prospect of a voice, in their enactment and administration. ”

“ The Ideal which thus seeks to interpenetrate the most ordinary affairs of private life, stands out also in the market place, in the forum, in the halls of legislation, and setting aside the merely useful, exhorts men to return to permanent values. That is the ideal view of politics which teaches us to hold the idea of country superior to the utilities of party, to exact worthiness of the public servants, to place the common good above sectional animosities and jealousies. ”

“ On the other side, the conservative party, composed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely defensive of property. It vindicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy, it does not build, nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant. ”

“ The normal rule for contemporary politics is the liberal-agrarian combination; nay more, it is the grouping of all the forces of social conservation against the party which seeks to overthrow the present order of society. ”

“ The hour has arrived when thoughtful colored men should cease to put their faith upon broken straws; when they should cease to be the willing tools of a treacherous and corrupt party; when they should cease to support men and measures which do not benefit them or the race; when they should cease to be duped by one faction and shot by the other. The time has fully arrived when they should have their position in parties more fully defined, and when, by the ballot which they hold, they should force more respect for the rights of life and property. ”

“ A representative government loses the character of a compromise between the different social interests, and degenerates into an instrument of despotism in the hands of the multitude. In America, it had its origin in the concessions of the Middle Class to the democracy. ”

“ In the politics of the interior, he demands ministerial responsibility, equality before the law, the right of voting supplies, parliamentary representation,—in short, the usual programme of the opposition in liberal Europe. ”

“ The same benign necessity and the same practical abuse appear in the parties, into which each State divides itself, of opponents and defenders of the administration of the government. Parties are also founded on instincts, and have better guides to their own humble aims than the sagacity of their leaders. ”

“ The appeal, however, in the name of electoral purity, to protectionists, trust-promoters, and socialists that they should drop their various movements and so confine politics to less exciting questions, falls, naturally enough, on deaf ears. ”

“ They may perhaps achieve some petty local success, they may gain some small temporary advantage, but they will help to introduce a system of action into our politics which will gradually undermine the very foundations upon which our republican edifice rests. ”

“ But while we are ready to accept any and every good result of party action, we affirm that the moral reform of our public concerns is infinitely superior in importance to the interests of any political party. ”

“ 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? ”

“ They demonstrate that there is no dominating moral principle in the creed of any of the great political parties, and that the voters who believe in principles rather than offices or men, hold the balance of power in our civilization. ”

“ I do not believe that party programmes of the highest consequence to the political life of the state and the nation ought to be thrust to one side and hopelessly embarrassed for long periods together by making a political issue of a great question that is essentially non- political, non-partisan, moral and social in its nature. ”

“ Let a man be of what side he may in politics,—unless he be much more of a partisan than a patriot,—he will think it well that there should be some equity of division in the bestowal of crumbs of comfort. ”

“ But this is certain, that the greater moderation we now employ in representing past events, the nearer we shall be to produce a full coalition of the parties and an entire acquiescence in our present happy establishment. Moderation is of advantage to every establishment; nothing but zeal can overturn a settled power, and an over-active zeal in friends is apt to beget a like spirit in antagonists. The transition from a moderate opposition against an establishment to an entire acquiescence in it is easy and insensible. ”

“ He knew that there were bad men enough in either party to ruin the country, if they had the power to do it; and good men enough in the same parties to promote the public prosperity to the best of their ability. His position, therefore, was taken in view of the tendency of different political principles and public measures, in their ultimate bearing on the established institutions of the country. He enjoyed, in a remarkable degree, the confidence of both the political parties of the day. ”

“ If we want good government, is it not time that we should take our share in the struggle to secure it?” And hence that fresh political activity, that freedom of criticism, that breaking of party lines, that movement of independence all over the field, which makes political ringmasters tremble and patriotic citizens rejoice in new hope. ”

“ When the Democracy, therefore, speaks of a reform of the civil service, the meaning of that term, in the light of history and of the tendencies at present prevailing, can be nothing else than that the reform shall consist in putting out all the Republicans and putting all Democrats in their places. ”

“ With this view of the nature of man, it is understandable that the Conservative looks upon politics as the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. ”

“ Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible. ”

“ They go to the form and substance of government, not to its policy, as in America, where every party cry, radical or conservative, is attuned to the music of a republican federation, and which is the sine qua non to all political conclusions. How can a nation progress until its people have chosen, or are competent to choose, a stable form of government, and are satisfied with certain organic political principles? ”

“ 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. ”

“ And you still call yourselves Democrats, and claim the confidence of the people by your fidelity to the great principle that popular liberty and free institutions must be secured by a strict limitation of the powers of government! ”

“ But on the other hand the friends of Reform rejoice to know that on their side a power is rising up with constantly increasing strength, to which in a free country eventually everything must yield—the power of public opinion. ”

“ But the Democracy has had the misfortune of exercising a remarkable power of attraction for the adventurous, and even the dangerous, elements of our population; and its attempts to regain power by all sorts of devices, and the advocacy of all sorts of principles and policies has gathered under its banner so many divergent tendencies and incongruous elements, held together by the only desire to regain the spoils of government, that when the party comes into power nobody can tell which element will be uppermost in strength and determine the current of its policy. ”

“ The greatest danger threatening democratic institutions comes from those influences, whether consisting in an excessive party spirit, or whatever else, which tend to stifle or demoralize discussion, and to impair the opportunities of the people for considering and deciding public questions on their own merits. If those influences are effectively curbed, our democratic government will not fail to hold up the true ideals of the great American Republic and to move forward in their direction. ”

“ The trend toward social democracy, with its accompanying eagerness to experiment with new devices for confiding to the people the power of initiating legislation and expelling unsatisfactory officials, paralleled by another tendency toward the short ballot and the concentration of power—these and kindred tendencies are viewed best in a non-partisan spirit in those free Western airs where the electorate is fickle, coy, and hard to please. ”

“ The contending political parties in a republic should be such in point of mental and moral constitution and capability that the government may be intrusted to either without serious apprehension for the safety of the public interest. ”

“ We too must pause in every keen emergency to cajole, to persuade, to placate, to reconcile conflicting interests, to humour conflicting opinions,—termed by those who hold them, "principles." We too must forever bear in mind the political party which is in power, and the political party which waits to get into power ”

“ Open to all men equally, within the limits of prudence, the avenue to political influence, and let them use, as they can and will, in combined or isolated action, the opportunities thus liberally bestowed. That is the key-note of the policy which I have consistently adopted from my entrance into public life, and which I am prepared to prosecute to the end, though that end should be the universal suffrage so dreaded by the last speaker. ”

“ But it is entirely obvious why those in control of the party and its main supporters in the political, financial, and newspaper worlds advocate the system. They do it from precisely the same motives that actuate them in opposing direct primaries, in opposing the initiative and the referendum, in opposing the right of the people to control their own officials, in opposing the right of the people as against the right of the judges to determine what the Constitution, the fundamental law of the land, shall permit in the way of legislation for social and industrial justice. ”