Political crisis

“ The unscientific character of a policy adopted at any crisis has often been an exact measure of the amount of external pressure applied through the competition of factions, or through the impetuosity of a populace only jaded into an unwonted attention to political affairs by exceptional events. ”

“ The general entered minutely into all the circumstances of the great political change, and detailed the effect which the late conspiracy had had on the minds of the people, and with what terror they contemplated the social disorders that must accrue from the death of their great ruler; how nothing short of a Government based on a Monarchy, with the right of succession established, could withstand such a terrific crisis. ”

“ The other crisis in which we are at present involved is domestic and purely political. It is the growth of opposing political parties, and its existence is undoubtedly to be regretted, if we take only a superficial view of the causes of its birth. ”

“ Nor can the politicians alone save our country. Far from it. They are the parties who aided in bringing about our present political troubles which are threatening to involve us in a deadly contest to save our country from dissolution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Another danger for the safety of our institutions, and perhaps the most formidable one, arises from the general propensity of political parties and public men to act on a policy of mere expediency, and to sacrifice principle to local and temporary success. ”

“ Unrestricted immigration, universal suffrage, rotation in office, the subjection of many offices and measures to popular vote, the parliamentary system, government by political parties—all these customs and habits into which we have fallen have arrived at failure which presages disaster. ”

“ And I now feel bound to say to you, though in confidence, what for wise political reasons I have not dared to utter to any political friend, that I more than fear—I believe—this Government is going to ruin! Presaging wrath is borne on every breeze, and tells of the coming woe! ”

“ The Government is in a wretched state of weakness, utterly ignorant whether it can scramble through the session, unable to assume a dignified attitude, to investigate with calm deliberation the moral and political condition of the country, and to act upon its convictions with firmness and resolution, tottering and staggering between one great party and one fierce faction, and just able to keep on its legs because both are, for different reasons, willing to wound but afraid to strike. ”

“ This principle being acknowledged, and party opinion being buried, in theory at least, at the foot of the altar of the Government de facto, whence is it that at this time creeps into our council chambers, our political cliques, our social haunts, our market places, ay, our most sacred tabernacles—a spirit adverse to the principles for which we are fighting, laboring for, and dying for? Let us—a people anxious for peace on honorable grounds, anxious for a Union which no rash hand shall ever again attempt to destroy—look, with a moment's calm reflection, at this alarming evil. ”

“ Why is it that the very bases of society have been sapped, and the conditions of good government despised, or denounced under the name of despotism? Why is it that social and political life is poisoned in its source, and the blood of the nation corrupted? ”

“ I hope it will bring them to look at the regularity, the order, with which we carry on what, if the word were not so much abused, I would call our glorious representative system of popular government. Its principles will stand the test of this crisis, as they have stood the test and torture of others. They are exposed always, and they always will be exposed, to dangers. There are dangers from the extremes of too much and of too little popular liberty; from monarchy, or military despotism, on one side, and from licentiousness and anarchy on the other. ”

“ Elaborate schemes are published by men of standing, setting forth how a condition of things may be brought about in which the country is to have two Presidents contending for the possession of the Government. By reckless characters the ear of the people is familiarized with the cry of forcible resistance and civil war. The alarm of capital and the stagnation of business are growing more distressing every day. ”

“ The growth of representative governments is the growth of arrangements made to prevent the gross abuse of irresponsible power. Each of our political struggles, ending in a further development of free institutions, has been made to put an encl to some particular gross abuse of irresponsible power. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As vested interests manipulated the apparatus of power and the disaffected majority agitated for some measure of political control, our government steadily drifted towards paralysis and in many cases abdication. ”

“ But if it fails, then greater than ever will be the danger—not of monarchy or imperialism, but that by a sort of dry-rot our institutions may gradually lose their vitality; that our time-honored Constitutional principles may be obliterated by abuses of power establishing themselves as precedents; that the machinery of administration may become more and more a mere instrument of ring-rule, a tool to manufacture majorities and to organize plunder; and that, in the hollow shell of republican forms, the Government will become the football of rapacious and despotic factions. ”

“ At the moment when the autocrat yields to the demands of that popular intelligence and assents to constitutional limitations of his power, or to anything that will give an authoritative, official voice to the people, the real revolutionary crisis will begin. The popular discontent will not be appeased, but it will be sharpened by the concession. ”

“ To "make political capital," as their slang phrase goes, for themselves or party, the most obvious policy of the country is disregarded, the plainest requirements of morality and common sense set aside, and the worst impulses of the people watched, waited on, and stimulated into madness. To listen to the debates in Congress, one would think the sole object of its members in coming together, was to make themselves and their country contemptible. ”

“ The political part of the tragedy is not destitute of interest; developing the misery of fraternal wars, the division of sovereign power, each contending for dominion, and closing in the dissolution of all government, by the despair of a people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They know that from the very beginning of its history the country has been in a chronic state of crisis, requiring the election of this or that man to office, demanding sacrifices which constitute the stock claim of the politician to reward ”

“ We must ever be on the watch to make all changes in the state serve our own ends; political parties, cabals, brotherhoods, and unions—in short, everything that affords an opportunity of creating disturbances must be an instrument in our hands. ”

“ A demoralization of public sentiment more than ever fatal to public justice and eventually to public order and peace; unscrupulous struggles for the possession of power to be used in the exploitation of opportunities without regard to the rights of the defeated—that is, alternating despotisms. ”

“ These eternal principles happen now, in a peculiar degree, to be implicated in the shifting and uncertain current of politics; and political storms may seem for a time to overwhelm them. But the cloud which obscures the sun does not annihilate it ”

“ When democracies fail to care for their citizens, the cause must be looked for in the political system. The cause for the present failure can be found in the Trias Politica structure of national decision making – the separation of powers of the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary branches of government. ”

“ How has it come to pass that the American political system, which was designed to guarantee the welfare and prosperity of the people, is the subject of such violent popular suspicion? Can these suspicions be allayed merely by curbing the somewhat excessive opportunities of the rich man and by the diminution of his influence upon the government? ”

“ But half a century elapses and this free government is ruled by a despotic interest; the Republic sinks into the mire of slavery and corruption, sinks deeper and deeper, and the hope of humanity sinks with it. ”

“ We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering people. We charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful condition to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they now promise us any substantial reform. ”

“ Elections would be superseded, and property would improvise some mode of practical government which every intelligent man would back. The danger of an episode of this sort is that it interrupts the course of things. It is revolution. It is the breakdown of democracy, and tends to perpetuate the conditions of incompetence out of which the crisis arises. ”

“ Democratic political theorists traditionally have assumed the need in time of emergency to subvert the governmental processes prescribed for peacetime and to rely upon a generically different method of government, frequently designated “constitutional dictatorship.” ”

“ Given universal suffrage; a vague, blind, bitter feeling of discontent on the one side and of insecurity on the other; unscrupulous politicians who may ride into power by exciting hopes and fears; class jealousies and class antipathies; great moneyed interests working through all parties with utter selfishness; a general disgust with political methods and feeling of practical political impotence, producing indifference and recklessness on the part of the great mass of voters—and any accident may start a series of the most dangerous actions and reactions. ”

“ It is clear to me that the chief force which produced the result was the fear of patriotic business men that they could not safely entrust the country and its great material interests in the hands of a party so full of dangerous and reactionary tendencies as the present Democracy. ”

“ In recent times it has displayed itself in many new forms, and on an increasingly large scale, until now, in this great crisis of our fate, it has grown to be a serious menace to the national unity, and a grave danger to the very existence of the State. ”

“ No longer devotion to our whole country, no longer an enlarged view of the liberties and progress of mankind, shapes the policies of parties and prevails in the councils of the government, but the strife of jarring sections and an insane grasp after ascendency has precipitated upon the country a cruel, internecine war. ”

“ For the first time since the civil war the American people have witnessed the calamitous consequences of full and unrestricted Democratic control of the Government. It has been a record of unparalleled incapacity, dishonor, and disaster. ”

“ Those who were most impressed with the evils which existed, the waste of the national resources, the corruption and jobbery in all departments of the public service, the pressure of taxation, the reckless conduct of the war, the repression of all attempts to improve the moral and intellectual condition of the people, were the most convinced that no essential change could be effected whilst the whole power of government remained in the hands of a limited class, to every member of which a share in the spoils of corruption seemed within reach. ”

“ Now for that great multitude of prosperous people who find themselves at once deeply concerned in our present social and economic crisis, and either helplessly entangled in party organisation or helplessly outside politics, the elimination and cure of this disease of statecraft, the professional politician, has become a very urgent matter. ”

“ Whatever the cause, however perverse the fates which bring us to this crisis, we are called upon not to settle questions of territory or establish new spheres of national activity, but to defend the institutions under which we live. Who doubts should we fail that the whole theory and system of government for which we have labored and struggled, our whole conception of civilization, would be discredited utterly? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since the current imbalance of powers has many victims, it may be hoped, none the less, that the parliaments of our democratic nations investigate the issue too, so that there is more hope for improvement in their living conditions. ”