Political agitation

“ And the indifferent mass, that in peaceful days has no weight in the political balance, but becomes the decisive force in times of agitation, ought to be so fully enlightened as to the aims and the essential ideas of our party, that it would cease to fear us and can be no longer used as a weapon against us. ”

“ It is not only a good account of a vital part of a great agitation, but a reservoir of material on successful, non-revolutionary, non-conspiring agitation under modern conditions of public attention, public interest, and political habit. ”

“ Conservatives, Ministerial Liberals, and Radicals, have each in turn endeavoured to deal with the question, but the endeavours have invariably proved failures. It is undeniable that throughout the country there exists an apathy upon this matter which it is impossible to stimulate into action, or to overcome by the ordinary machinery of political agitation. ”

“ It is apparent that between the initial political activity of reformers and their ultimate political accomplishments, there must intervene the real agitation, the part that does the work, which goes on in the brains and souls of individual men, and which can only be observed in social life, in manners and conversation. ”

“ And when, by intimidation and violence, the representation of the country was vested in the heads of agitation, it became an object of the last importance to each of the political parties who rule the country to procure the popular support ”

“ They represent the height of political tactlessness, because the author, instead of appealing from the bad leaders to the good leaders, appeals from the leaders in general to the "crowd." This is as much an attempt to drag the movement back organisationally, as the idea of substituting political agitation by excitative terrorism is an attempt to drag it back politically. ”

“ To menace the Legislature with hordes of the lowest of our people—to stop traffic and commerce—desecrate the Sabbath, and double the work of the Police Courts on the following day is called 'Peaceful agitation,' To copy the faults without the experience of foreign nations is deemed—'Political wisdom'—To assault principle after principle of our noble constitution, the accumulated wisdom of our forefathers, is regarded as the true characteristic of a 'Friend of the People. ”

“ Whenever there has been an effort to spread it, there has been agitation and resistance. Now, I appeal to this audience (very few of whom are my political friends) , as national men, whether we have reason to expect that the agitation in regard to this subject will cease while the causes that tend to reproduce agitation are actively at work? ”

“ Moreover, while such preaching and such agitation may give a livelihood and a certain notoriety to some of those who take part in it, and may result in the temporary political success of others, in the long run every such movement will either fail or else will provoke a violent reaction, which will itself result not merely in undoing the mischief wrought by the demagog and the agitator, but also in undoing the good that the honest reformer, the true upholder of popular rights, has painfully and laboriously achieved. ”

“ She must undertake it for another reason,—because she alone can perform the work peaceably. If this fearful problem is left to take its course as a tfiere political question, to be ground out between the upper and nether millstones of political parties, then what will avert agitation, angry collisions, and the desperate rending the Union? ”

“ It has, at the same time, excited political ambitions and apprehensions which have produced a profound agitation throughout the civilized world. In this unusual agitation we have forborne from taking part in any controversy between foreign States, and between parties or factions in such States. ”

“ The need of distinguishing between the symptoms and the causes of political unrest is well illustrated by the silver agitation. No political movement since 1870 excited such bitter controversy or did so much to unsettle business. ”

“ The oscillations—that is, the political agitations which result from this struggle of labor against power—now lead to a depression of the central force, which compromises the very existence of society; now, exaggerating this same force beyond measure, give birth to despotism. ”

“ When a long series of civil dissensions, of frauds upon the public, of treasons against the parties, of perjuries to principles, have mixed up men and things, blotted out the 'line between political groups, and confused all ideas, politics must become a genuine chaos. ”

“ The time was one, indeed, in which, on both sides, there were manifested the passion which is born of political excitement, and the violence which springs from terror. Timid people might be excused if, in such a mad world, they clung with desperation to existing authority as the only protection to society against revolution and anarchy. ”

“ The agitator is the product of unrest—his is the voice of the social deep; and, though he may be reviled as a demagogue who preys upon the ignorance of his fellows, the unrest continues and the agitation increases until the cause of it is removed and justice is done. ”

“ But if this agitation is not confined to questions of legislature and the conduct of public affairs,—if it attacks society in its very basis,—if, instead of emulation between parties, there arises hostility amongst classes, the movement ceases to be healthy, and changes to a destroying malady, which leads on to the most lamentable disorders, and may end in the dissolution of the State. ”

“ The nearer the day of election approaches the stronger becomes the agitation, the more violent the cry, the personal abuse, and the threats. One might imagine that the torch of discord was about to be lighted in every city, that the Union was at the point of being torn to shreds, and that every citizen was in danger of being attacked by his neighbour. ”

“ In consequence of the progress made by public opinion, and the happy subsidence of revolutionary agitations, the excessive governing has already diminished, and the disposition to it is rapidly declining. The annoyances inflicted by the political police are fast disappearing. ”

“ In the struggle for party power, the two great regions of the country have been brought face to face upon the most dangerous of all subjects of agitation. The authority of the Government was relaxed just when its power was about to be assailed; and the people, emancipated from every control and their passions inflamed by the fierce struggle for the Presidency, were the easy prey of revolutionary audacity. ”

“ Revolutions are always the outgrowth of deepest wrongs, clearly defined by long and heated agitation, which inflame the mind of the people, and divide them into hostile factions. The field of battle is simply the theater upon which the hostile factions decide by superior prowess, or numbers, or sagacity, the questions at issue. ”

“ Was it necessary that they should make a handle of a question on which the passions of the people were roused to the highest point, and on which its daily bread might depend, that they should condemn the country to another year of agitation, and expose it to dangers, which, only a few months before, they had themselves thought it necessary to avert, by advising an extraordinary exercise of the prerogative? ”

“ The agitation had been too great to be suddenly calmed; and for the active opponents of the system to become suddenly its friends, or even indifferent to its fate, would have been a victory of reason over passion, or a surrender of individual judgment to the decision of a majority, examples of which are rarely given in the progress of human affairs. ”

“ It has stirred up all the bitter contests of the last thirty years, and plunged the country into the bloodiest civil wars, and it will do so again unless we at last cut out and eject this prolific abomination from our political system. ”

“ All political dissensions, all the revolutions that have taken place in this state since its origin, vanish before so interesting a revolution as the present. They were only disputes between party and party; struggles for power, between unprincipled men, in which the people were constantly duped. ”

“ The aim of agitation should be to incite the people to protest, as generally as possible, against the present state of affairs, to demand such reforms as are in harmony with the party's purposes, and, especially, to demand the summoning of an Organizing Assembly. ”

“ The cumulative effect of well-conducted and successful political defiance campaigns is to strengthen the resistance and to establish and expand areas of the society where the dictatorship faces limits on its effective control. ”

“ These men will agitate still; the noise and rant and howl of interested fanaticism will still resound. But it will be without substantial foundation, without plausible object, and with the palpable certainty that no good can come from it, but that it is an agitation and a warfare against the constitution itself. With this fact before the eyes of all men, such agitation must be up-hill work, however industriously it may be prosecuted. ”

“ What did they do next? (I want you to realise that no step we have taken forward has been taken until after some act of repression on the part of our enemy, the Government—because it is the Government that is our enemy; it is not the Members of Parliament, it is not the men in the country; it is the Government in power alone that can give us the vote. It is the Government alone that we regard as our enemy, and the whole of our agitation is directed to bringing just as much pressure as necessary upon those people who can deal with our grievance.) ”

“ The conduct of the universities, the repression of seditious writings, the establishment of a political police,—nothing was neglected in this regular crusade, undertaken by the government against the revolutionary feelings by which the heated imaginations were then inflamed. After great disturbances have taken place in a state, the sole anxiety of the government is to check any disposition to disorder, and they are excited to do so by public opinion, and by the middle classes, who entertain a dread of fresh revolutions, and with good reason. ”

“ The discontent gradually grew so general, the storm of petitions so violent, the repugnance of the people to the police-despotism so menacing, that the old parade of the absolute kingly power would no longer suffice, and some new step in the direction of liberal innovations seemed imperatively necessary. ”

“ Hence the repute of political agitators as mere disturbers of society, and of their followers as a type of ingratitude.
I might go on suggesting other constant features of the order which never dies out. Every century has exhibited a political agitator in one country or another ”

“ But when the seeds of revolution are planted, and the shoots have expanded, the various causes which contribute to their growth and to the introduction of a change of manners are too many to recount. The effervescence of party rage sets open the flood gates of animosity, and renders it impossible to calculate with any degree of accuracy on subsequent events. ”

“ Since the dawn of history, popular agitation has been a remunerative occupation; and increasing throngs of followers have in turn inspired the leaders, till their claims and promises have overtaken and outstripped even Nihilists and Socialists; drawing them into the new faith that the initiative, the referendum, the recall, placing us in direct control of every function of government will make us kings and princes all. ”

“ No one who has lived among them can [122] really believe that the fanatical agitation so general at present in the country can be ascribed to any other cause than to the unwise policy of a government that thus influences the minds of the people. ”

“ Let the Party be which it will, tis Destruction even to themselves, to run up all their Niceties and all their Scruples to the Extremes. Every Dispute becomes a Feud, every Spark a Flame, every word a Blow, every Blow, a Civil-War, and by this Intestine Confusion of Principles, Backt with the Passion and Fury of Men, this unhappy Nation is Subdivided into an Infinite Number of Parties, Factions, Intrests and seperate Opinions. ”

“ It will be represented to him that no party can live without public plunder, and that the abolition of the spoils system will lead to the downfall of the Republic. From flattery to threats, from private appeals to open demonstrations of hostility in Congress, every means will be employed to induce him to break his word. And that opposition will be directed by able leaders, experienced in all the resources of political warfare. ”

“ All these evidences of growing social and political discontent, all these agitations and disturbances—the more violent talk on the one side, the leaning to repression on the other—are indications of unstable equilibrium, of a maladjustment of powerful forces. It is the necessity of the time—the vital, pressing necessity—that these phenomena receive the careful, conscientious attention of thoughtful men, who will trace them to their source and popularize the remedy. It will not do to leave them to the ignorant poor and the ignorant rich, to politicians and demagogues. ”

“ Then special minions of the law are detailed to this place, for violence and hatred of employers, insurrection and socialism find here ready followers. Impromptu mass meetings are common, and law-breaking schemes find their cradle beneath its glittering lights. It is always thronged within and without, a veritable nursery of riot and disorder. ”

“ Under the severe pressure of despotism the people rise in their fury, and snap their chains asunder. A republic follows; degenerating first into a rude and wild democracy; and thence into a cruel and more turbulent anarchy. ”

“ Communistic fires always smouldering have again and again burst forth — demagogues, fanatics, and those creatures for whom there is no place in organized society, whose element is chaos, standing ready to fan the fires of revolt; while Orleanist, Bonapartist, Bourbon, are ever on the alert, watching for opportunity to slip in through the open door of Revolution. ”