Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-03-20

separate rights of States, including always
the right of local self-government, will be
no longer more than tradition.
1t is necessary to make it clear what
this change means, and what influences it
must exercise upon popular liberty and
national vitality. All history shows that
the diffusion of institutional self-govern-
ment to the greatest possible extent is
necessary to the securing of the largest
measure of freedom and the most just and
least burdensome government. This diffu-
sion the American States enjoyed origin
ally, and it is this which is threatened.
We have reached point In the national
history when either the people must rouse
and insist upon great reforms, or the
natural tendency of affairs will carry us on
to centralized absolutism certain to pave
the way for military despotism. The
danger lies not alone in the strongly
marked centralizing policy of the Supreme
Court, but in the formidable support which
the corrupt condition of politics gives to
this movement. Already the people have
lost control of politics. Everywhere few
men manipulate the machinery, pack the
caucuses, arrange the primaries. Xix the
Conventions, and leave to the masses only
the privilege of voting for candidates they
have had no part in choosing Congress
demands and depends on civil service cor
ruption, and resists all efforts at reform in
that direction. The public service, which
ought to be non-poLtical as absolutely as
any private or corporate business system
is, has been converted into a mere party
machine, monopolized by the ruling fac
ton, and all public rights in the control of
it are ignored. With a Federal office
holding army depending upon Congress.
with series of judicial rulings breaking
down and destroying State sovereignty,
with corruption instinctively tending more
and more to Washington, as the safest
place in which to promote schemes which
the closer inspection of State Legislatures
would thwart, it is-evident that the move
ment towards Capitalization must inevita-
bly, acquire greater impetus as 1t proceeds.
And meantime the people are being
stripped of their defenses. The greater a
country becomes, the denser its popula-
ton, the more complex its interests, the
more necessary is it that the people every
where should keep the levers of self
government in their own hands. For the
removal of authority to a distance always
involves the weakening of responsibility and
the encouragement corruption. And since
the Supreme Court is striking down the
defenses of the people one by one, at the
same time that the organization of corrup-
ton in the public service is being made
more complete, it would be the blindness
of imbecility not to anticipate the worst.
An irresponsible Congress means plum
dered people: means centralized abso-
lutism of the Boss Tweed pattern means
the constant employment of the cant of pa
triotism as disguise for the reality of
scoundrelism means the extinction of
those well-ordered institutions which, if
carefully preserved, would have secured
can indestructible union of indestructible
s States" but the destruction of which
threatens the conversion of the union into
a rope of sand. Beyond centralized abso-
lutism such as that towards which we are
steadily drifting, there is no national fu-
ture possible. To arrive at such a state
of things would be to practically reach
the eud of the American republic. If this
collapse is to be prevented, however,
public opinion must be better instructed
than it has been hitherto.