Political agent

“ Some of your opportunists, amateur and professional politicians, with the lust for wealth and easy money, seek and secure high offices, and permanent soft jobs in your Government. Few hirelings of crooked political bosses and machines reach high places in Government, or attain them through political campaign work, contributions, fixed elections, and dishonest political maneuvers. ”

“ Political leaders selected them for party purposes, and rather because they were unknown than because they were known; while greater men, who had the national eye upon them for services and abilities, had created too many enemies, secret or open, for successful competition. ”

“ Make every public servant feel that he is acting in the open and under scrutiny; and, above all things else, take these great fundamental questions of your lives with which political platforms concern themselves and search them through and through by every process of debate. ”

“ NEW AND OLD CONCEPTIONS OF GOVERNMENT.—To draw such a distinction between Government and people as if two separate spheres of power, a stronger and higher, and a weaker and lower, negotiated and came to terms with each other, is a remnant of transmitted political sentiment, which still accurately represents the historic establishment of the conditions of power in most States. ”

“ Q. You say that your duty is to preserve the purity of the public taste; was that also the object of the earlier of your predecessors?
A. Seemingly not, as the office was called into existence to serve as a bar to the dissemination of opinions of an entirely political character.
Q. But that is not now the raison d'être of the appointment?
A. Oh, no; for nowadays, thanks to the newspapers, politics enjoys free trade. ”

“ As your nomination and election marked a most hopeful revival in political morals, so may your administration, born of the noblest impulses of the American people, become a lasting example of good government, to serve as an instruction and encouragement to coming generations and to write your name into the annals of the Republic with imperishable honor. ”

“ Then, too, the political world is well to the front. There are honest and unscrupulous Ministers of State, upright and venal deputies, enthusiastic and cautious candidates for power, together with social theoreticians of various schools. ”

“ I am not aware that history furnishes any example in which a number of these political atoms or corpuscles have coalesced into a body, and learned to feel themselves one people, except through previous subjection to a central authority common to all. [2] It is through the habit of deferring to that authority, entering into its plans and subserving its purposes, that a people such as we have supposed receive into their minds the conception of large interests common to a considerable geographical extent. ”

“ Your controlling class who largely contribute to political campaigns influence your ruling class through political parties who openly or secretly help to elect some of their representatives to your Congress, or appoint former directors, and attorneys as members of important key cabinet and diplomatic offices. ”

“ Our rulers are but our agents, chosen in obedience to the convictions which govern the policy of the selection, and mere political success is no enduring constituent of greatness. The public servant, and the private citizen, will alike be honored or condemned, as they are faithful or unfaithful to their responsible duties. ”

“ The principles I am enquiring into, regard the cool administration of their government; it belongs to another branch of politics, to contrive bulwarks against their passions, vices and weaknesses, as men. ”

“ Ask we too the ages what they have done to develope the true theory of political organisation, to improve the mechanism of the social system, to impart practical wisdom to its ministrations, in order that the State may discharge its high duty to the citizen, for whose sake it exists, and whose allegiance it claims. ”

“ In the difference of national character between the people of these two empires we may discern the influence of political systems on the human mind, and infer the importance of the task which a legislator undertakes, in attempting to reduce a barbarous people under the control of government and laws. ”

“ The politician, cunning and subtle, swims along smoothly upon the rolling current of the credulity of [Pg 76] the people and his own duplicity. He prospers because you have not as yet grown into full political manhood, and he succeeds in hoodwinking you with the belief that his heart is overflowing with patriotism and anxious solicitude for the public weal. But I must leave this class—the politicians—to the tender mercies of several gentlemen who are waiting the opportunity to contribute their part to your enterprise. ”

“ The real thing that we are after in making regulations as to political activity is to keep those who are in the employ of the Government from using their positions to further their personal ends or to serve some political party. ”

“ I wish to push still further the question of how much real power the workman possesses over the education of his children. I maintain that, setting aside the interference of ministers, merchants, manufacturers, doctors, lawyers, and squires in his affairs, he has only the shadow and semblance of power, and that he never will possess anything more substantial under a political system. Let us see for what purposes political organization can be usefully applied. ”

“ We have from the first affirmed, and unvaryingly kept in view, the coequal importance of two great requisites of government—responsibility to those for whose benefit political power ought to be, and always professes to be, employed ”

“ Having never had any practical contact with the workings of financial or commercial systems, having stood aloof from the intricacies of political management, the man at the head of the Government is the objective point of all their efforts. ”

“ These eight short stories form a study in state politics. The grafter, the boss, the spoilsman, the reformer, the honest country member of the legislature, all are true to their parts and serve to bring out the various phases of American business and political methods as viewed from the inside. ”

“ Here is the leader of a great party engaged in a most important contest. The character of the government, the welfare of the greatest city of the republic, one of the greatest cities of the world, is at stake. But this is nothing to him. All he things of is not the interest of three and a half millions of people, not the prosperity and good name of one of the world's most important emporiums of commerce and industry—what he thinks of is simply the spoils of office—patronage. ”

“ All political authority is vested in the people themselves, They have the right to select their officers and agents, and these officers and agents are responsible to the people. Political authority does not come from the clouds. ”

“ No person holding a position in the classified service shall take any part in political management or affairs or in political campaigns further than to cast his vote and to express privately his opinions. ”

“ The traditional political maxims, the character of the loading sovereigns, statesmen, and public men in any given court, as well as the conduct of negotiations, may be acquired by study, by observation, by a residence as secretary, as attaché; but who, unless a man of real genius for his art—who, unless a man of real ability and talent, shall seize on, fix, and turn to his purpose, the ever-mobile, the ever-varying phases of courts, of camps, of councils, of senators, of parliaments, and of public bodies? ”

“ Take, for instance, the exercise of political power. Is a state free in proportion to the number of its subjects who are admitted to rank among its citizens, or to the degree in which its recognised citizens are invested with political authority? ”

“ Political offices are chiefly monopolized by men of famous birth or great riches. The king, the chief officer of the land, must surpass all others in wealth, and the pomp and circumstance which comes thereof, and in aristocracy of birth. ”

“ This mode of conducting the highest class of administrative business is one of the most successful instances of the adaptation of means to ends which political history, not hitherto very prolific in works of skill and contrivance, has yet to show. ”

“ And therefore you will not be surprised to hear that in these great organizations there have arisen, from among the very laborers, splendid orators, capable organizers, profound students of politics and political economy, statesmen and masterly politicians. ”

“ Many a time you have given the people to understand that you regarded public office as a public trust. When you oppose what is generally looked upon as demanded by the public voice as well as the public interest, it must be expected that you have weighty reasons for it—reasons corresponding with your character and station. ”

“ The public servant who proves himself faithful and efficient is, therefore, wherever the law is honestly observed, substantially secure, no matter to what party he may belong. And it may be said that under the National Government, the law, as far as it reaches, is honestly observed. ”

“ NATIONALITY AND HUMANITY
I have discussed, in the three preceding chapters, the probable effect of certain existing intellectual tendencies on our ideals of political conduct, our systems of representation, and the methods which we adopt for securing intellectual initiative and efficiency among our professional officials—that is to say, on the internal organisation of the State. ”

“ Besides, you want not only to be elected, but, if elected, to do good service to the country and credit to yourself by your Administration. I think I am not entirely ignorant of politics. Let me make a prediction. No skill in nice balancing will save you from the necessity of choosing between two roads, one running in the reactionary tendencies and machine politics, and the other in the direction of intelligent, progressive and reformatory politics. ”

“ The great game of the government was to sow, if not dissension, at least distrust, in the ranks of the national party,—to chill the ardor of patriotism, and, wherever possible, to excite different views, and different roads to success, amongst the popular leaders of the time. ”

“ A completely popular government is the only polity which can make out any claim to this character. It is pre-eminent in both the departments between which the excellence of a political Constitution is divided. It is both more favorable to present good government, and promotes a better and higher form of national character than any other polity whatsoever.
Its superiority in reference to present well-being rests upon two principles, of as universal truth and applicability as any general propositions which can be laid down respecting human affairs. ”

“ That the other political authorities in the given society are subordinate to the sovereign or supreme one; deriving their political powers from its express or tacit delegation, and holding those powers at its pleasure. ”

“ Now, we can have no more conception of law outside of a lawmaker, than we can have of an agent without a principal or an agency. Law and lawmaker, as well as agent and principal, are inseparably interlocked. ”

“ Politicians, some of whose names the public will ignore, must yet be accurately gauged. Their power as managers and leaders must be estimated. Even the foreigner must have his place, and must be known. ”

“ Now, such services as these, done for a whole people, always deserve and usually receive, though not expressly bargained for beforehand, yet implied in the public devotion of one party and the general consensus of the other, extraordinary honors and emoluments. ”

“ Now the theories and practices regarding the selection and behavior83 of public officials which constitute political democracy have been worked out against the historical background just alluded to. They represent an effort in the first place to counteract the forces that have so largely determined the possession of rule by accidental and irrelevant factors, and in the second place an effort to counteract the tendency to employ political power to serve private instead of public ends. ”

“ Men with no political experience nor education found the road open to responsible positions requiring statesmanlike qualities in an unusually high degree—not only financial, but diplomatic and administrative ability combined with absolute integrity. ”

“ They were the classes in which embryotic statesmen acquired the political alphabet, the ABC of political procedure, the manner of putting a motion, taking a vote, making a nomination, and the correct order of precedence governing the motions and amendments. There too, was acquired the first great requisite of a politician,—the art of saying non-committal things in a most convincing tone of voice, and of treating with much politeness those whom one held in secret abhorrence.
There were two offices, those of school trustee and pathmaster, and these two were equal in power and glory. ”

“ In this land of ours, this America, the common citizen may criticize without restraint the policies of his Government or the aims of the chief executive. He may vote as his judgment or his conscience advises and not as a ruler dictates. ”

“ They had so long seen the public policy more or less directed by views of party, and often even of personal advantage, as to be ready to suspect the motives of a chief magistrate compelled, for the first time in our history, to feel himself the head and hand of a great nation, and to act upon the fundamental maxim, laid down by all publicists, that the first duty of a government is to defend and maintain its own existence. ”

“ Regarding government as an institution for the public good, they demand a knowledge of its operations, and a participation in its exercise. A call for the representative system, wherever it is not enjoyed, and where there is already intelligence enough to estimate its value, is perseveringly made. ”