The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1883-08-22
Democratic Misealculatlon.

Agreat many Democrats are evident
~ of opinion that if serious misconduct
can be proved against Republicans, all
Republicans who desire honest admin
istration and progressive legislation will
at once join the Democratic party. This
is an error akin to that of those who
hold that if a party Convention can be
induced to proclaim a certain policy in
its platform, every voter who favors
that policy will Immediately support
that party without regard to the natural
history of platforms, or to the character
and conduct of the party, or to the gen.
eral probabilities o: the situation. The
sole defect of this view is that in both
cases it disregards entirely the nature of
parties and of politics. Those who hold
the view are very apt to remark with
emphasis that politics is the most prac-
tical business in the world, forgetting
that that undoubted truth makes their
reasoning unsound. 1t is because poll
tics is very practical business that
voter does not Immediately leave his
party when another party makes a
plausible profession, or when his fellow
partisans are taken in fault. The gov
ernment of the country is carried on by
the convenient agency of parties. Theo-
retically they represent certain general
principles of administration, and the
policy which naturally proceeds from
them. Actually they do something
more. By association and common
organized action they acquire living
interest to their members, touching their
pride, their emulation, their personal
feeling, until party comes to exist al
most for itself, and to be sustained by
powerful esprit de corps. Unconscious
ly it thus changes its nature, and is
judged not by its distinctive declara-
tions, nor as an agency for special ends,
but as a body whose claims to support
rest not upon certain abstract principles,
but upon the general character of its
membership, and the general tendency
of its conduct as proved by experience
A man, therefore, who has long or
always acted with a party because of
his confidence in its practical patriot
ism and wisdom abandons it, not when
another party declares its own virtue,
but only when, upon q deliberate sur
vey of all the circumstances, he decides
either that he can no longer trust his
own party to secure the objects which
he has at heart, or that some other
party will more certainly secure them.
To produce this conviction something
more is necessary than to point out Of
fenses that have been committed in the
name of his party, and to insist that
the pledges of better conduct from the
opposing party must be accepted as
valid. Something more is necessary,
also, than to argue that there is but a
simple alternative, that a party respon-
sible for offenses must be abandoned,
and that the only possible practical
course is to vote with the opposition
There are obviously two preliminary
questions which must be satisfactorily
answered. Do the facts show that the
offending party is a hopeless offender,
and that the accusing party will do bet
| ter? Until the voter is persuaded that
his party is hopeless as an agency of
honest government, he will naturally
sustain its National dominance, howev-
er sharply he may criticise certain ac-
tions, and however resolutely he may
refuse to support certain local nomina-
tions. And even when he despairs of
his own party, although he may throw
away his vote, he will certainly not
| give it to party which has been at the
same time equally on trial with his
own, and which has equally failed.
This is the fallacy of the Democratic
argument in the present juncture. Dur
ing the period of Republican executive
supremacy the Democratic party has
had majority in the House of Repre-
| sentatives, if not in the Senate, and un-
| disputed control of many great States
and cities. Its appeal to the country,
therefore, is simply this: "We waive
our hideous pro-slavery record before
the war, the betrayal of trust by the last
| Democratic Administration, and our
venomous Copperhead attitude during
the war; and we say that the Demo-
cratic attempt to battle the peaceful
Presidential decision of 1877, our en-
deavor to starve and paralyze the Gov
ernment during the extra session, our
financial charlatanry, and our general
conduct in the city of New York and
wherever we can control, ought to per-
| suade the country to withdraw its con-
fidence from the Republican party, and
give it to us" At present this is the
only Democratic cry for 1884, and it is
certainly worthy of the career of the
party for the last generation.-Harper' S
Weekly.