Nonpartisanship

“ Believing, to quote his own language, "in an open and sturdy partisanship which secures the legitimate advantages of party supremacy," he also believes that parties were made for the people, and declares himself "unwilling, knowingly, to give assent to measures purely partisan which will sacrifice or endanger the people's interests." ”

“ By substituting this fungus of representation, this metaphysical prolusion, this oyster-like substratum, without an organ of active vitality, as a foundation for State rights, and the solitary security for a federal government, instead of State election and representation, the constitution is supposed to have created two of the most effectual weapons for the destruction of both which could have been devised. One is a maxim — Divide and conquer. ”

“ If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. ”

“ From the moment of our founding, America has been engaged in an eternal and often pitched partisan debate. That's no weakness. In fact, it is at the core of our strength as a democracy and success as a nation.
Political bipartisanship is a goal, not a process. ”

“ I had hoped that it was possible to secure a nonpartisan inquiry by means of a commission into evils the existence of which is known to all, and that out of this might grow legislation from which all thought of partisan advantage should be eliminated and only the higher thought appear of maintaining the freedom and purity of the ballot and the equality of the elector, without the guaranty of which the Government could never have been formed and without the continuance of which it can not continue to exist in peace and prosperity. ”

“ Does any one suppose it could make any difference, as to the binding authority of an act of Congress, and of the duty of a State to respect it, whether it passed by a mere majority of both houses, or by three fourths of each, or the unanimous vote of each? Within the limits and restrictions of the Constitution, the government of the United States, like all other popular governments, acts by majorities. It can act no otherwise. Whoever, therefore, denounces the government of majorities, denounces the government of his own country, and denounces all free governments. ”

“ Now, I've never gone in for nonpartisan business, but I do think that all the leaders of the two parties should get together and make an open, nonpartisan fight against civil service, their common enemy. ”

“ It would then be absurd, to transfer the duty from the party of the majority, which has the power, to that of the minority, which has it not — and this, too, when, with such a majority, the question of power could be settled in its favor, more easily and promptly, through the federal government itself. ”

“ The pretended neutrality of belonging to no party, will not save your reputation. In questions merely political, an honest man may stand neuter. But the laws and constitution are the general property of the subject: not to defend, is to relinquish;—and who is there so senseless as to renounce his share in a common benefit, unless he hopes to profit by a new division of the spoil. As a lord of parliament, you were repeatedly called upon to condemn or defend the new law declared by the house of commons. ”

“ As long as republican institutions are dear to the hearts of the American people, no party in this land can bear such a load with impunity. No party in a Republic like ours, among a noble and independent and liberty-loving people like ours, can hope to maintain itself with unmanly submission to that which is wrong, even if that wrong be committed by its chief. ”

“ Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party. Thus have we seen those territorial divisions and regulations which ought to be permanent, as well as other useful laws, altered, for no other end than to influence an election. ”

“ Whenever, therefore, Congress shall meditate any infringement of the State constitutions, the great body of the people will naturally take part with their domestic representatives. Can the general government withstand such an united opposition? Will the people suffer themselves to be stripped of their privileges? Will they suffer their Legislatures to be reduced to a shadow and a name? ”

“ What is there that can prevent any sincere man among you from joining our effort to give this State good government, when your own consciences must tell you that the partisan rule against which we have risen was an injury to the best interests of the State, and certainly no honor to those who supported it? ”

“ 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. ”

“ I repeat, how much easier would it be to solve such problems, how much easier to avert the dangers to our republican institutions they bring with them, if but for a short period that partisan spirit could be dispelled which blinds our eyes against the truth and cripples our patriotic impulse to do what is right and just and wise. ”

“ Yet those who believe, as we all must when we think seriously of the subject, that the proper aim of the party system is, after all, simply to subserve the public good, cannot but hope that where such partisanship on a matter of this kind conflicts with the public good it shall at least be minimized. It is all right and inevitable that we should divide on party lines, but woe to us if we are not Americans first and party men second! ”

“ Retrospect will be a safer basis of judgment than promises. We shall not, however, I am sure, be able to put our civil service upon a nonpartisan basis until we have secured an incumbency that fair-minded men of the opposition will approve for impartiality and integrity. ”

“ With so effectual a weapon in their hands as the exclusive power of regulating elections for the National Government, a combination of a few such men, in a few of the most considerable States, where the temptation will always be the strongest, might accomplish the destruction of the Union, by seizing the opportunity of some casual dissatisfaction among the People, (and which perhaps they may themselves have excited,) to discontinue the choice of members for the Fœderal House of Representatives. ”

“ There has been no suggestion of general interference by the state to impose upon the people a single interpretation of policy outside of law. The opposition has been as free as the supporters of government, and the third or independent party, or the silent independent voter, tends to correct such an overwhelming drift as could be interpreted as an unrestricted mandate from the people to their representatives, or from the government to the people. ”

“ Should the majority in any State, where the balance thus vibrates, venture to take a stand, and to interpose its authority, against the encroachment of the federal government on its reserved powers, it would be difficult to conceive a case, however clear and palpable the encroachment, or dangerous its character, in which the minority would not resist its action, and array itself on the side of the federal government. ”

“ The nation revolted against such a display of despotic partisanship, refused the Democratic government the vote of confidence which the President had solicited and elected a Congress Republican in both Houses. ”

“ Even if he wishes to have changes and reforms made in the government, he seeks to make them "from the inside." Since, then, it is the established principle of the nation that its government shall be conducted through the agency of two major parties, it becomes scarcely less incumbent upon citizens to recognize those parties, to exercise their political activities in them and through them, and, if ever they desire changes in them, to make them "from the inside." ”

“ In the Southern States, for instance, the Independent Democrats may, in the course of time, find themselves obliged to “fuse” with the Republicans; or a number of citizens may, without any permanent organization, assume an independent attitude with the intention of casting their votes for the candidates of one or the other of the old parties, as the interests of good government may in their opinion suggest, as is the case, to a greater or less extent, in all parts of the country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The method by which the party in opposition contrives to secure a parliamentary majority for itself is by disparaging the measures of the party in power, and promising greater reforms and better measures than those of their rivals. ”

“ Empire. It may be at once admitted that parties such as these are inevitable in any system of representative government. For so long as fundamental differences of opinion exist among electors, it is only by means of organizations based on the primary opposing principles that any working constitution can be framed. To attack party-government as such is vain and even absurd. Nevertheless, party has become the rival of the State; and its rivalry is all the more dangerous and insidious because it always professes to act in the interests of the State and on behalf of the nation as a whole. ”

“ On the formation of the constitution, the community settled down into two great parties, Federalists and Anti-Federalists, or Democrats; the first believing that the most imminent danger to our peace and prosperity was in disunion, and that popular jealousy, always active, would withhold the power which was essential to good order and national safety; the other party believing that the danger most to be apprehended was in too close a union, and that their most powerful opponents wished a consolidated and even a monarchial government. ”

“ After a long struggle for democracy, led by the opposition political parties, there is, in the chambers of Deputies and Senators, a new relationship of forces which hampers the injustices inherent in presidentialism and points, with hope, to a true separation and independence of the powers of the Union. ”

“ But party control entrenched by disfranchisement and exclusion of nonconforming party members is a means which to my mind can not be justified by any end. In the interest of free government, we should foster the power and the will to be independent even on the part of those we may think to be independently wrong. ”

“ Whatever the two party organisations have a mind to do together, whatever issue they chance to reserve from “party politics,” is as much beyond the control of the free and independent voter as if he were a slave subject in ancient Peru. ”

“ Is it not well and necessary to break the despotic partisan rule which vociferously pronounces the sentence of political death upon every man who dares to have an independent opinion; which insolently threatens the first commercial city of the State with injurious legislation, if the people of that city, true to their honest and patriotic impulses, refuse to work into the hands of partisan rings ”

“ The organization of powerful political parties becomes natural and inevitable. It is just as natural and inevitable that the more numerous the duties intrusted to the State - that is, the greater the spoil to be fought for in caucus and convention and on the floors of Legislatures - the more powerful, dangerous and demoralizing they are certain to be. ”

“ It will furnish an opportunity to the independents and the party men to deal fairly with each other. If you and your friends, as Republicans, want the support of the independents, you ought not to be left in doubt as to the things which will secure and those which would repel that support. I notice here and there statements in the newspapers assuming that a nomination of this or that character would command the whole vote of the independent friends of reform, some of which assumptions I have good reason to think erroneous. ”

“ If the board of arbitration established by that bill decides in your favor, no man will be able to say that you were put into the Presidency by mere partisan action. The result of the great contest will not only be submitted to by the whole people, but all good citizens will unite in defending it, as brought about by the fair and impartial judgment of the highest authority in the land, against what clamor may still be raised against it by extreme partisans. ”

“ The old Whigs who had so recently stepped from their "finality" platform, could not be unitedly rallied, and the Democratic bolters were only half converted. In my own State the opposition to the Democracy repudiated even the name Republican, and entered the field as "the People's party." It was a combination of weaknesses, instead of a union of forces. All the Fillmore Know- Nothings and Silver-Grey Whigs of the State were recognized as brethren. ”