Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-10-16
TIE OPPOSING FORCES.

elements involved. In a nation of fifty
millions the political situation can only be
drawn with free hand. 1t is possible to
catch the general drift of large masses of
men. to perceive the tendencies Of large
areas of thought, but that is the most that
can be expected. To seek to label every
body with a distinctive political name is
to commit an absurdity. and to insist that
partisan nomenclature necessarily defines
character as a whole is even more prepos-
ferrous. In word, it is only blind and
stupid partisanship which divides great
nation into the sheep and the goats, and
sweepinay Classics the frst as deserving
all the joys of Heaven, and the second
as having earned I'll the pains of
Hell. Such classification, though far
too common, is worse than beating
of the air, as it encourages narrowness
in the people, and binders intellectual
growth. 1t is of course based upon the
apparently common sense assumption that
if party advocates sinister measures, all
who support that party must be eVll-
minded men. But it is not perceived that
the standard of judgment in this case
cannot be the same on both sides, and
that therefore the same moral notions do
not obtain in the two parties. 1t IS still
more necessary to remember that parties
are not made up of casuists, who have
carefully reasoned out every argument on
which they expect to stand. They are
composed largely of men who are what
they are from mere force OF habit or asso-
citation. Often partisanship is an affair OF
a locality or it is matter of family Gus
tom; or it is a question of business policy.
The proportion of cases in which it is the
direct and sole result of intellectual cogi-
tation and conviction, is probably quite
small. It follows from this that no
matter what political principles men
espouse, they themselves viii be
good, bad or Indifferent, with
very little reference to their party
affiliations. OF course if a certain party is
favored by the more ignorant elements OF
the community it must be expected that
the evil tendencies of that party will be
more marked than those of the other; not
because its principles necessarily react
upon the characters of its members, but
because crime and vice are always most
prevalent among the most ignorant classes.
If therefore ignorant elements join the
other party, they will produce the same
effects there, and so the natural results OF
training and heredity make themselves
manifest without reference to party doc
trines. But having promised so much, il
becomes necessary to point out that while
it is impossible to analyze and classify
party character infinitely, and while it is
foolish to attempt any arbitrary division OF
the kind, it is by no means impractieable
to gather the broad general tendencies of
parties, and to ascertain how they are re-
lated to the interests OF the commonwealth.
The Democracy has undoubtedly been,
and remains, the party of least loyalty to
republican institutions. Its original doc
trine of State Rights always involved
notification and secession, and this last
measure always must have entailed the
ultimate destruction not merely of the
Union, but of republican government on
the continent of North America. For
though the secessionists never chose to
follow out their own reasoning to its logi-
cal conclusion, it is very certain that had
they been successful they could only have
paved the way for the dissolution of demo-
cratic institutions throughout the country
and the choice between piecemeal conquest
by some European power and absorption
by some new strong government growing
out of the ruins of the republic. Now a
party which holds doctrines having such
| implications cannot be said to be very
strongly attached to republican institu-
tons. It is true that Secession divided
the Democracy, but it is also true that the
majority of those who then left it never
returned to it, while the majority Of those
who did not then leave it believed, openly
or secretly, in the right of seces-
sion. From the rebellion onward,
however, the Democracy has been less Of
party and more of faction. 1t has lost
the dignity, the intellectual force, the en-
/
thusiasm of conviction, which marked it
when its leaders were men who profoundly
believed in the theories they upheld, and
when the sinister tendency of those theories
had not yet been exposed. And since so
large portion of the Democracy showed
itself ready to dissolve the Union at that
time, the party as whole has since ex-
hibited ever increasing disregard for the
principles which lie at the base of free
government The causes for this are
diverse. At the South there is discon-
tented, disloyal population, clinging with
| obstinate persistence to the pro-rebellion
ideas of the negro, and refusing him the
political rights the country has accorded
him At the North there is an ignorant
proletaFiat, for the most part incapable OF
forming any conception of governmental
theory banded together under the lead
OF venal demagogues, and kept in
allegiance by the allurements of public
plumber. The Northern Democracy of the
great cities consists Of little more
then the elements we have named.
The Southern Democracy includes
great deal of sheer ignorance,
too, but mixed through it is also great
deal of perversity. The South seeks
political power for obvious reasons, and it
has undertaken in the present campaign
to secure it by more than the usual vio-
.