At first sight this might seem a not uncommendable departure, but a little reflection ought to convince one that the Mugwump instead of being a harmless, semi-useful factor of civil regeneration, is today the most disturbing, the most pernicious, the most subvertive element in our politics. In the first place he is thoroughly, totally, and absolutely un-American both in spirit and in purpose. He undertakes the utterly absurd and impossible task of treating politics apart from parties, and in thus endeavoring to separate the inseparable he violates the very principles upon which this government and all representative government is founded. Where the people govern themselves they must think upon public questions. Where they think, they are certain to be divided.
Parties then arise naturally.
They are a necessity, and are merely the instruments by which the sovereign people express and effect their sovereign well. Given a party, their organization must follow if the party is to achieve anything. Given organization, there are bound to be leaders. Now it is against this principle of organization and leadership that the Mugwump directs his relentless warfare. Now while it may be true that the machine is occasionally perverted from its legitimate function in order to serve the personal ends of some selfish manager, yet we deny most emphatically that either the machine or the boss is, ipso facto, an evil.