Storming party

“ But as the organ and instrument of parties, in governments of the numerical majority, it is as incompetent as suffrage itself, to counteract the tendency to oppression and abuse of power — and can, no more than that, supersede the necessity of the concurrent majority. On the contrary, as the instrument of party warfare, it contributes greatly to increase party excitement, and the violence and virulence of party struggles; and, in the same degree, the tendency to oppression and abuse of power. ”

“ But a large majority of them are in their inward souls disturbed and disgusted when they see, after a party victory, hordes of partisans pounce upon the offices of the Government like a band of greedy mercenaries plundering a captured city. They are ashamed when, after the incoming of a new Administration, they hear of a President wishing to abolish this scandal but not being permitted to do so by the ravenous spoilsmen of the party, and of an official guillotine at work and of so many heads falling every day. ”

“ They do not spring from the wiles and intrigues of “political Catilines,” as an indignant party organ expressed itself. They are not the cause but the result, the natural outgrowth of the situation. They are elementary upheavings; and if you try to repress them by a violent enforcement of party discipline you will only provoke more violent and formidable explosions. And now, while the prospect of a new line of division may to-day appear rather dim, yet I repeat something of the kind will come with the necessity of a natural process. ”

“ With such successes and such moral forces behind us, we may indeed hope to see the day when our party warfare will be contests of opinion free from the demoralizing and repulsive interference of the plunder-chase; when a change of party in the national Administration will no longer present the barbarous spectacle of a spoils debauch, torturing the nostrils of our own people and disgracing the Republic in the eyes of civilized mankind ”

“ A furious party-spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints naturally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. ”

“ The pest of partyism invades all the large cities of the country. New York is made the plunder of the thieves of one party and Philadelphia of thieves of the other. It is surely impossible that any nation should endure such a system forever. A nation which deliberately gives itself up to government by faction, under the name of party, signs its own doom. ”

“ It denounces as a traitor him who protests against party tyranny, and it makes unflinching adherence to what is called regular party action, the condition of the gratification of honorable political ambition. Because a man who sympathizes with the party aims refuses to vote for a thief, this spirit scorns him as a rat and a renegade. Because he holds to principle and law against party expediency and dictation, he is proclaimed as the betrayer of his country, justice and humanity. ”

“ Drink-traffickers, having the history and experience of all ages, climes, and conditions of men, declaring their business destructive of all good—finding no support in the Bible, morals, or reason—appeal to misapplied law for their justification, and intrench themselves behind the evil elements of political party for defense, party tactics and party inertia become battling forces, protecting this evil. ”

“ The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which, in different ages and countries, has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. ”

“ Parties, when they strive solely for principle, are the life of a nation; but when they strive solely for pelf, patronage, and power they are its death. Even corrupt party leaders may destroy a republic; sometimes even ambitious leaders may do so. Did a nation ever make a narrower escape than did our own during the slaveholders' rebellion? Who but ambitious party leaders caused that rebellion? ”

“ For who could say when the landed interest, made up of stupid bull-headed men like Lord George Bentinck and Stubbs, a party without a leader and with divided counsels, would be in power? They were a mob rather than a party, and like every other mob were ready to sacrifice future prospects to present revenge. ”

“ The draft riots had spread terror which had never died, and strong men shuddered when they remembered the bloody assizes of the democratic party. They had seen men and women, blind with party hate, dizzy and drunk with party madness, stab and burn and revel in murder and in mutilating the dead. ”

“ Neither do the independent movements we observe in several States distinctly foreshadow new party formations on the field of national politics. They are protests against “machine” rule, as in Pennsylvania, or against a narrow-minded and vicious use of party power by factions, as in some of the Southern States, and may result in taking the controlling influence within the old parties from one set of persons to give it to another, or even in permanent defections and eventual transfers of considerable bodies of voters from one of the old parties to the other. ”

“ Do you think that the law-breakers and corruptionists, or the Administration which countenanced them, or the party managers who protected them, will be made better men if they receive the encouragement of success? Are you simple enough to believe that the party tyrants will relax their sway, if you show them that such an insurrection against their rule, as that of Cincinnati, is of no avail, and that they really hold, not only their organization, but the American people in the hollow of their hands? ”

“ The unreasoning obedience of their cohorts is the bulwark of their strength, failing which the dictatorship of the bosses would soon lose its footing. It is equally intelligible that the sworn henchmen of the bosses, who feed at their crib, should insist upon strict party allegiance as the primary virtue of the citizen, for their political, and usually also their material, existence depends upon the favor of the bosses, which, in its turn, depends upon the success with which they keep their subordinate commands in strict discipline. ”

“ What had fanned popular prejudice into a flame during the uproar over the Excise Bill was the violence of the so-called "Patriots." In the absence of a strong opposition and of great impulses to enthusiasm a party breaks readily into factions; and the weakness of the Tories joined with the stagnation of public affairs to breed faction among the Whigs. ”

“ As a political partisan, no one can stand against him. With his 54brandished club, like Giant Despair in the Pilgrim’s Progress, he knocks out their brains; and not only no individual, but no corrupt system could hold out against his powerful and repeated attacks, but with the same weapon, swung round like a flail, that he levels his antagonists, he lays his friends low, and puts his own party hors de combat. ”

“ The onset of the spoils-hunters of the victorious party upon the new administration is this time especially reckless and ravenous. It is, indeed, natural enough that the “dead-beats” that hang on the skirts of every party should muster in full force when there are pickings in sight. ”

“ At the ballot-box, whether at home or in the camp, they are Union men, and vote as they fight, and hold little in common with the political leaders of the Democratic Party in or out of this Hall—the Seymours, the Woods, the Vallandighams, the Woodwards, and their indorsers, who hold and control the Democratic Party here, and taint it with Treason, till it is a stench in the nostrils of all patriotic men. ”

“ If, however, the times were disturbed, if the parties were divided by acute discord and men’s minds inflamed by the memories of a terrible civil war, the sense of justice was, nevertheless, not yet so much blunted by party passions as to allow the dominant party to abuse their own power beyond a certain point. ”

“ Under a false notion of fealty these men subject their neck to the party collar and go to the polls yoked with ignorance and crime, and at the heels of some low-browed political dictator they sacrifice their country’s weal on the altar of partisan allegiance. ”

“ It is a theory of permanent civil war carried on through the forms of parliamentary debate and popular election, and, indeed, the two traditional parties are the political descendants of the two sides which in the seventeenth century were actually engaged in civil war. For the ordinary purposes of the domestic life of the country the system has its advantages, but they are coupled with grave drawbacks. The party system destroys the sincerity of our political life, and introduces a dangerous dilettantism into the administration of public business. ”

“ The scenes of horror attending civil commotion cannot be described; and the conclusion of them will be worse than the term of their continuance. The stronger party will then make traitors of the weaker ”

“ The disunionists were his partisans, his friends, and confidential counselors; they constituted a remnant of the once proud and successful party which, by his compliance and coöperation in their interest, he had disrupted and defeated. Their programme hitherto had been the policy upon which he had staked the success or failure of his Administration, so that in addition to every other tie he was bound to them by the common sorrow of political disaster. ”

“ 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 ”

“ There were bloodthirsty leader-writers who were nothing less than traitors to their country at this juncture. And there were agitators who still further inflamed the passions of the people, until at last it was proposed that the “Patriotic Party”—for such the war-makers impudently called themselves—should form processions in the streets, and even storm the Houses of Parliament, and compel the Government to obey their will. ”

“ Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While but a few years ago a man who refused to obey the behests of his party was not only ostracized as a traitor, but laughed at as a fool uselessly sacrificing himself in a windmill fight, we behold to-day all over the country countless thousands asserting their independence from party dictation, doing their own thinking for themselves, and following only their convictions of duty. ”

“ Practically, by raising a party cry; by exciting every species of evil passion of which man is capable; by tickling the cupidity of one man and flattering the ambitions of another; by intimidating the weak, and groveling before the strong; by every species of fawning sycophancy on the one hand, and brutal overbearing bullying on the other.
“Party, party, party! A man would rather commit a crime than vote against his party. The evil runs through the country from East to West, from North to South, eating at the nation’s heartstrings, gnawing at her sinews, and undermining her strength. ”

“ If you will call up to your recollection the events of our country's history for the last twenty years, I am sure you will agree with me that personal hostilities and party strife have been the most fatal obstacles to our happiness and progress as a people—an immense loss of time and waste of public money in party debates and struggles—a most fruitful source of partiality and corruption in legislation and government.... ”

“ That is, of course, the final point in that theory of our institutions. The victorious party in an election is regarded as having conquered the country; it takes the spoils and gives or allows to the minority as a boon, given in contempt, what it sees fit. ”

“ In your party are the men who threaten and endanger it by the most iniquitous attempts to deprive certain classes of people of their political rights by fraud, intimidation and violence; thus to subvert the new order of things, throwing the country into chaos again. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The danger lies in the difficulty of sufficiently safeguarding the interests of the public from the spoilsmen of either party. It is through the party [Pg 88] that citizens must work for political measures, but it is also through the party machine that anti-social forces are able to successfully carry out their plans. ”