The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1880-03-11
A Picture of the Average Statesman.

In q recent article upon Secretary
Sherman, as a candidate for President,
The Nation reveals what it calls the ra-
tionale of his early financial vagaries and
subsequent conduct. Its general value
is in the mercilessness with which, in
MIR. Sherman, the average professional
politician of the day is described. The
Nation says:
"Mr. Sherman probably became con-
vinced at a very early period of his polit-
ical career that, in order to be states
man in the existing conditions of Amer
ican society and politics, man must stay
in Congress by hook or by crook, and
that he cannot stay in it by mere sound
ness of views, breadth of knowledge, or
honesty of intention. He can only stay
in it by either holding the views actually
entertained by his constituents, or pro-
pounding views which they are likely to
embrace with eagerness. A man who
means to make politics his career, unless
he comes from small State, where the
competition is small and personal weight
is much felt, is therefore obliged to prac-
tice from the first the art of seeming to
think the thought of the majority with
more than ordinary profundity and to
feel its passions with more than ordinary
intensity, and of finding out beforehand
what it is likely to think and feel. By
far the larger proportion of those who
practice this art become such adopts in
it that their personality is wholly sacri-
feed. They sink into mere advocates.
They cease to have opinions of their own
on any public question. They carefully
| discard all passions or prejudices which
the people are not likely to share, and
keep far from them all knowledge which
the people are not likely to appreciate or
admire. The result is often in few
years kind of atrophy of the perceptive
faculty, destruction of mental or moral
! initiative, and of all tastes or interests
which do not bear on the question how
are nominations to be got. Along with
this comes a faith in compromise which
sometimes assumes the proportions of n
mania. After long practice in arranging
compromises in party platforms and in
the division of offices the whole universe
assumes the appearance of a field for
compromise, and all things, human and
divine, of materials for compromise
Your trained politician would meyer have
accepted the Copernican astronomy in its
entirety, but would have proposed re-
Cancellation of that and the old system,
by which the sun would have been held
| to 60 round the earth in some years and
the earth round the sun in other years. +"
This is true picture of the ordinary
Congressman. 1t suits the Congressman
who must stay in Congress for the sake
of the pay, quite as we'll as the Congress-
man who stays there for the love OF
power and to find opportunities of graft
flying ambition. The moment that con-
tinuance in Office is his paramount OBJ
ject, public man ceases to be an inde-
pendent representative of the people, and
passes his time in finding out the way the
wind blows to-day and is likely to blow
tomorrow. No such man can be any
thing more than the blind instrument OF
the noisiest of his constituents. Instead
of representing the highest and best
thought and purpose of his district, he
is the brazen pipe through which the
machine forces the political stream, the
direction and effect depending on those
who hold it.
Fortunately the people begin to under
stand that representative who has no
judgment and opinion of his own, upon
which and by which he will stand, cost
| what it may. is of little value in the long
run to the great body of his constituents,
who are more interested in good govern
ment than in the fortunes of any political
coterie. This is the secret of the strength
of men like Bayard of Delaware, and
| Wyatt Aiken of South Carolina. These
men are not always right, by any means,
but they always have opinions, they are
sincere, they do their own thinking and
are not afraid to say what they think.
1t is better to have man who does some
times put his foot into it, when he opens
his mouth, than man who never moves
or speaks until he is sure that he is on
the side of the majority.-Charleston Neps
and Courier.