Morning journal and courier., 1883-06-23
Saturday, June 23. 1883.
..THE GOOD MAN IN POLITICS,

There are no men in the country quite
 so free from the party spirit against which
 Washington warned his countrymen as the
 professional politicians of both parties. They
 stimulate party spirit in every possible way,
 and, to use their own phrase, work It for all
 it is worth. Their fayorite newspapers are
 the thick and thin organs which always go
 with the party, and which hold no crime equal to the crimes of bolting and of scratch ing. But they themselves have no politics, and may generally be found. when the con- test they instigate isat it's sercest, ,closeted to-
 gether, Republicans and Democrats. in a dark room up an alley arranging the terms of 8 deal.
 The foregoing extract from the New York expression of the fact;"-certainiY so far as local politics are concerned. In general it is,
 of course, mistake to suppose that the present is worse than the past, yet no man
 who has lived through the last two decades with his eyes open can fail to see that 8 great change has taken place in the kind of men who control party machinery. In the early years of the anti-slavery contest the best men took an active interest in politics be- cause they felt that they must. The passage of the fugitive slave law and the Kansas out rages awakened political excitement such as had never existed before in this country. A sense of outraged justice made every right minded man politician. The ablest and the purest men found their way into public life Men of position and character went into politics as little later they went into the volunteer army, led by the highest impulses of which human nature is capable. TIL. aI,.. IL E. very radical one. The best elements have everywhere sunk to the bottom and mire has come to the top. The change has been, as the Times indicates, from a class of men who went into politics out of principle to 8 class of men who go into it ssto make some thing out of it.'
 The absence of men of culture and high character from politics is of course theme of common remark. The remedy that has very generally been suggested is that they return to it. This is as much as to say that the remedy for disease is to cure it. Hard ly anyone will be found to deny that the best men should take part in politics. The question is how to get them to do it. It is notvery easy to get respectable men to go into that which is not respectable and it does not operate very strong inducement to tell them that their presence will make it re- spectacle. They know very well that they can never cut much of figure in the caucus. If the politicians are to be beaten on their own ground it must be done by their own methods. In order to control the caucus they must be ready to pack it if necessary, and the very act of packing it is one to which 8 man of self-respect and lover of fair play is not willing to descend. The best men of the community have neither the time nor the disposition to resort to caucus methods, and no amount of preaching, either by the press or the pulpit will ever induce them to do it. If preaching would accomplish this result it ought to have been done already, for there has certainly been no lack of it. The difficulty is not that the better part of the community have too little to do with politicians, but too much to do with them; not that they do not attend the caucus, but that they accept and abide by it's results. If they refused to be controlled by it there would be sudden end of the present race of politicians Political evils generally suggest their remedy, that is when they get to be bad enough to drive men to seek 8 remedy. In New York it has been discovered that the way for good men to have influence in politics is not to attend the caucus. but to get rid of it. At the last cleo ton non-partisan Citizens committee was formed to make good nominations. This we believe is solving the question of the good man in politics in a very common-sense fashion. The way to fight rings and ma chimes is not to get into them, but to organ lze outside of them and against them.