Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-11-05
THE OLD PARTIES.

There are those, who upon the heels OF
every election, prophesy the disintegration
and retiracy of the old parties The
present case has proven no exception.
The highways are plentifully supplied
with these prophets to-day, who are loud
and emphatic in their lugubrious fore
casts. But we place little confidence in
these speculations. Both the great parties
will live They are not for day, but an
age. The Democratic party will exist by
virtue of its opposition to progressive
movements, for there always must be such
political organizations of reactionary
character The Republican party will ex-
list because of its historical basis, and be-
cause of its reformatory and progressive
character Both parties may suffer modi-
fications, adapting themselves to new ques-
tions and changing social conditions, and
recognizing political protests by the peo-
pie, but the cohesive power of neither will
fail The efforts to form new parties must
proceed upon untried theories and with
out the strength of tradition. 1t is use
less to say that past records count for
nothing. 1t is true that upon party's
past it cannot alone live, but by history
in which it can take honest pride it is
largely fortified. The great parties will
not dissolve; they will prove their right
to exist by graphing with social needs
and living issues on the one hand, and by
a conservatism on the other that will al
ways, in greater or less degree, take the
form of opposition to intolerant organ
ization. 1t is inconceivable that the
Republican party, for instance, will melt
away at the demand for party that is to
stand upon class distinctions, or that the
Democratic party will yield its ira
ditions to new candidate for
favor that proposes to array all the foreign
born citizens upon one side of the political
battlefield and the native-born upon the
other. Nor is it at all likely, despite re-
cent rebukes, that it will abandon its in
grained free-trade doctrines or cease its
opposition to the political policy of the
Republican party. The old parties will
exist, they will be chief actors in many a
Presidential election to come, and the
prophecies of their death or merger into
new organizations will not be fulfilled in
any near future. They are too closely
knit into the life of the nation and too
intimately related to its most stirring his
tory to be stricken out Of existence sud-
denly. The Republican party by its re-
cent triumphs in the East testiies to
degree of vitality wholly at war with the
idea of decay, or the fulfllment of mis-
sion. As representative of the most intel
ligent and progressive and courageous
thought of the day, it will continue to be
the medium of its expression and to prove
equal to the needs of the hour Where
influences dominate that tend to weaken
it, there it is undergoing a purifying pro-
cess that is augmenting its strength and
lntensifying its vital tenacity. None of
the side movements are likely to supplantit,
but that some of them may influence it to
the enlargement of its policy, Or to the
recognition of new ideas, is not improba-
bic. The antagonists of these will natur-
ally drift into the Democratic party, while
those who would build up parties on " one
idea will continue to project their ex-
tremist movements into political conten-
ton with varying successes at the polls.
But the idea that the two old parties are
to yield the political battle-ground to
them speedily, if at all, is not sustained
by reason.
y