Third party

“ Nevertheless, the possibility remains that the third party, from some unexplainable preference in favor of one of the parties, or because he may be interested after all, or because he is liable to error, will pronounce an unjust decision and combine with the offender to carry it out. ”

“ The opposition of the two is not to be vanquished otherwise than if some one annihilates both. Only in this "some one," the third party, does the opposition find its end; otherwise idea and reality will ever fail to coincide. ”

“ The circumstances attending the first discussions raised the all-important questions, and they point clearly to the existence among active politicians of opinions which could never form part of the official Whig or Tory programmes, and must therefore lead sooner or later to the growth of a third party in the State. ”

“ Every modern European state will have in some form or other these three parties: the resistent, militant, authoritative, dull, and unsympathetic party of establishment and success, the rich party; the confused, sentimental, spasmodic, numerous party of the small, struggling, various, undisciplined men, the poor man's party; and a third party sometimes detaching itself from the second and sometimes reuniting with it, the party of the altogether expropriated masses, the proletarians, Labour. ”

“ Campaigns such as Bryan’s, where one of the parties is captured by an element which seeks a real transference of power from the significant to the less significant classes, split the party, and sporadic third party attacks merely throw the scale one way or the other between the big parties, or, if threatening enough, produce a virtual coalition against them. ”

“ No sooner is a party betrayed by one head, but they rail at him, and set up another; and when this has served them in the same manner, they choose a third; and put full confidence in every one of them successively, though they all make the same use of their credulity ”

“ As my Brother BLACK'S opinion suggests, the only legitimate interest the State may invoke in defense of this barrier to third-party candidacies is the fear that, without such a barrier, candidacies will proliferate in such numbers as to create a substantial risk of voter confusion. ”

“ From constable up to President [runs his final clause] there is no office for which the two great parties cannot furnish able, clean, and acceptable men. Whenever the balance of power shall be lodged in a permanent third party, with no candidate of its own and no function but to cast its whole vote for the best man put forward by the Republicans and Democrats, these two parties will select the best man they have in their ranks. Good and clean government will follow, let its party complexion be what it may, and the country will be quite content. ”

“ Intervention from outside is looked for in many quarters. The opinion is frequently expressed that if a provisional government should be appointed and elections held under the efficient control of a third party, the republic would be placed in a position which would lead to prosperity. ”

“ The regular, organized parties are the only ones which seriously count in politics. It sometimes happens, however, that a few months before the elections a small band of politically or industrially influential men will meet to consider the project of a third party, while their real aim is to create a little organization whose voting power will be coveted by both of the great parties. ”

“ The other political parties were too small to afford chances of success. If less reliance was to be placed upon the strike and more upon political action, either a third party must be constructed or the leadership in one of the old ones must be seized. ”

“ Should that fail, the old parties will in the end "fuse" against the upstart rival. If they are able to stay "fused" during enough elections and also win them, the fidelity of the adherent of the third party is certain to be put to a hard and unsuccessful test. ”

“ Liberals, again, feeling the difficulties which have attended the emergence of third-party candidatures in the constituencies, ask for a reform in the method of voting so as to ensure that the member elected for any constituency shall represent a majority of the citizens. ”

“ Professor Commons continues:—"The argument, however, of those who fear that third parties will hold the balance of power is not based solely on a dread of the corrupt classes, but rather of the idealists, the reformers, 'faddists,' and 'cranks,' so called. They would retain exclusive majority rule and party responsibility in order to prevent the disproportionate influence of these petty groups. ”

“ In England, as in America, third parties rarely last. The attraction of the larger mass is irresistible, and when the crisis which created a split or generated a new group has passed, or the opinion the new group advocates has been either generally discredited or generally adopted, the small party melts away, its older members disappearing from public life, its younger ones finding their career in the ranks of one of the two great standing armies of politics. ”

“ To me this government seems to consist of a confederation of parties of interest, excluding the majority of the nation. Such as the church of England, the paper stock party, the East India company, the military party, the pensioned and sinecure party, and the ins and outs, once called whigs and tories; each struggling for self interest and self government, but all, creeping forth like caterpillars from the legal nests in which they have been hatched, to feed upon the fruits of the nation. ”

“ We wish to turn our backs on all sectional parties, and on all parties groping in the moonlight of the past, and to ally ourselves with any party that will be animated with the spirit of civil and religious toleration, broad and elevated patriotism, not bounded by State lines, and inspired with pride and an abiding faith in the genius of free institutions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the voters of the party were in truth the source of authority within the party, then a means had to be devised of ascertaining their will. The democratic principle, in short, had to be applied to party. ”

“ Of the final issue I have no doubt; but no man can tell what shall come to pass in the mean time. We see that political parties in the State are snapped asunder: whether the national party shall not be broken up, no man can say. ”

“ We mean to be perfectly understood on this point, and therefore openly disclaim all steel-traps, all principle, as it is called—all party—all politics. Our only guide shall be good, sound, practical common sense, applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in every-day life. We shall support no party—be the organ of no faction or coterie, and care nothing for any election or any candidate from president down to a constable. ”

“ The thoughtful American citizen will therefore affiliate himself with one or the other of the two great parties which have survived the births and deaths of scores of ephemeral organizations, the two great parties to which must be credited all the good and against which must be charged all the evil in our government for the last two-thirds of a century. ”

“ If you look at the action of tho chief political parties, you see no more respect for justice in the politics of either party than in the politics of tho nation, the resultant of both; no more respect for right abroad, or at home. One party aims distinctively at preserving the property already acquired; its chief concern is for that, its sympathy there; where its treasure is, is also its heart. It legislates, consciously or otherwise, more for accumulated wealth than for the labouring man who now accumulates. ”

“ It was an object in which men of all political opinions might unite without compromising those principles, and it was a fundamental rule of the association that no party politics should be mixed up in the discussion of the question. ”

“ Without a proscription of others they are bound to give to their own party the preference in all things; and by no means, for private considerations, to accept any offer of power in which the whole body is not included; nor to suffer themselves to be led or to be controlled or to be overbalanced, in office or in council, by those who contradict the very fundamental principles on which their party is formed, and even those upon which every fair connection must stand. ”

“ The opponents of the system in the smaller states will no doubt make a party, and a noise, for a time; but the ties of interest, of kindred, and of common habits, which connect them with other states, will be too strong to be easily broken. ”

“ The intention is to overcome party government, and is conceived at a time when parties are divided along lines that do not represent the economic issues that ordinarily influence the course of legislation. ”

“ We shall very soon have parties formed—a court and country party—and these parties will have names given them; one party in the house of representatives will support the president and his measures and ministers—the other will oppose them—a similar party will be in the senate—these parties will struggle with all their art, perhaps with intrigue, perhaps with corruption at every election to increase their own friends, and diminish their opposers. ”

“ The lukewarmness of patriotism, the activity of private interest, the vastness of States, conquest and the abuse of government suggested the method of having deputies or representatives of the people in the national assemblies. These are what, in some countries, men have presumed to call the Third Estate. Thus the individual interest of two orders is put first and second; the public interest occupies only the third place. ”

“ Every argument which can be urged against coalitions, as such, is also an argument against party connexions. Every argument by which party connexions can be defended, is a defence of coalitions. What coalitions are to parties, parties are to individuals. ”

“ But neither combination nor connection, in any moral and rational sense of the term, has anything to do with a system of government which perpetually sets up the great offices of state as the prizes of a contest between two organized factions, to one of which each citizen is bound to adhere, owing to his party an allegiance in fact higher than that which he owes to his political conscience or to the state. ”

“ They rest also on the traditional and tacit admission that one’s own judgment, and that of one’s party, may be mistaken, and that in the long run the legislation which any party can effect is an expression of the organised national mind and is therefore to be respected. ”

“ It clearly implies that the community is divided by a difference of opinion, not only on ordinary matters and points of current administration, but on some question of fundamental character and of paramount importance. Nothing less can make the submission of the individual intellect and conscience to party discipline rational or moral. In the absence of such a question, party is faction, the ruin of all commonwealths. ”

“ However, be the proper substitute for party what it may, the thing here insisted on is that party is evidently in a state of decadence; that the causes of its decadence are not accidental or temporary, but inherent in its nature, which is that of an instrument of change, not that of a permanent principle of government; and that, consequently, sooner or later some other basis for government must be found. "You are sanguine," say objectors, "if you think you can carry on constitutional government without party." We trust not; for, if it is so, the end of constitutional government is at hand. ”

“ But such a policy must not be sought and cannot be found upon party lines. The statesman who is to expound it to his countrymen and represent it to the world must be the leader not of one party but of both. ”

“ The parties then are not well placed as towards each other to negotiate and to compromise and to coalesce in a future harmony. The party of the first part is too proud to yield to their inferiors, and the party of the second part is too bitter to be sweetened. ”

“ We demand, not “recognition,” but representation, and we are out to throw our votes to any party which gives us this, and withhold them from any party which refuses to give it. No longer will we follow any leader whose job the party controls. For we know that no leader so controlled can oppose such party in our interests beyond a given point. ”

“ When, on account of our early bringing up, we act with a certain political party, most of us are not prompted by a clear conviction of the justice of the principles of our party, but we do so because we have been taught to respect it as the right party to which to belong. ”

“ The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party.... Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens ”

“ Not only has each leading political party made the attempt, but the task has been undertaken by the Greenbackers, the Populists and by those who would form a party of their own, or be independent of all parties. ”