The Washington critic., 1890-01-30


yet, strangely enough, the policy of gencr-
ously pensiouing all soldiers for disabili-
ties incurred IN the service, with reasona-
bic safeguards ag0lnt fraud on the Treas
ury, hns been carried out with exemplary
fidelity by the party which represents 'the
old slave-driver, the ballot-box stuffer, the
Ku-Klux, the criminal and the illiterater'
while the party OF the church folk, the
schoolmastcrs, the thrifty farmers and the
skilled mechanics has distinguished itself
by enormous and demorallzing schemes of
spoliation, In which hundreds of millions
have been worse than wasted aud hundreds
Of millions more are now in jeopardy; and
its restoration to power was celebrated for
months by carnival OF tliiegery in thesyery
offices Of the Government.
8. If there is any point on which the ideal
Republican OF Senator Hoar is profoundly
and intensely convinced, in opposition 10
his typical Democratic "saloon- keeper and
ballot-box stulIer,n it is that of taking the
civil service out of partisan politics, max
ing It no more available for the purchase or
reward of clectioneeriug services and de-
voting it unreservedly, in a business-llke
way, to the ful1llment of public duties If
any tenet can be named as characteristic
of the intelligent and virtuous private citi-
zen, distinguishing him from the unprin-
ciplcd saloon-keeping, ballot-box stufling
political gambler, 1t lie this of civil SER
vice reform. On this subject the prac-
tical record OF neither party is
immaculate. Both parties have made pub
,,r 70
of this reform, and both have fallen short
of their professions under the temptations
ofpower MIR. Cleveland's Administration,
in its later months, lapsed painfully from
the resolute faithfulness with which it be-
gan. But at its worst estate, his Admins-
tration was like the driven snow in com
parison with the painful corruption with
which the postofllce patronage has been
handled by those two eminent Presbyterian
elders, Mr.. Harrison and Mr.. Wanumaller,
from the moment that they gripped the
reins. Curious, is IL not, that the party OF
the saloon-keepers and ballot-box suffers
should have given us, in this respect,
comparatively honest Administration;
while the party of the elders aud deacons,
in defiance of its formal pledges and of the
solemn obtestations of its Presidential en-
didate on the floor Of the Senate, should so
have renewed the shame OF the worst days
of the republicg No punctillousness in
family prayers, not a lifetime of labor in
the Sunday school can undo or outdo one
hundredth part of the decentralization that
has been wrought by this treachery to pub
lie duty.
And yet the fact remains that at the
North, to very considerable extent, the
Republican party is the party OF the best
and most intelligent people and the Demo
cratic party is the party of--well, of the
second-best.
4. One more illustration of this curious
political paradox will suffice before pro-
ceeding to study the explanation of tt. 1t
is found In the matter of national uomina-
tions. We will go back to the conventions
of 1854, when the Republican party was
certainly numerically stronger in the
boasted elements of education, morality
and piety than it has been since and the
Democratic party certainly not less weak
For not Senator Hoar himself will venture
TO deny that the Mugwump and Independ-
ent detection then impending included the
best of these typically Republi can virtues.
The question before the Republican con
vention was between nominating Mr.. Blaine
and nominating somebody else. Now it
canEot be truly said that Mr. Blaine Is the
darling of the educated and religious cir
cles of the nation. If there is anything
that the quiet, intelligent patriot
who is Mr., IIoar's typical Republican alb
hors and detests from the bottom of his
heart, it is a professional machine politi-
clan. But Mr.. Bline is more than ma
chine politician. His political friends
might claim for him, with justice, that he
is the machine incarnate. The shouters,
the gushers, the heclers aud strikers, the
election gamblers, the caucus-packers, and
| (if such may be imagined to exist in the
Republican party the saloonkeepers and
ballot-box suffers, were all for Blaine,
"by the natural law of their being;n and
those quiet, patriotic citizens who mind
their churches and their schools, their own
farms and their skilled labor, were for
somebody else-for almost anybody else.
But the eminently respectable Republican
party, in convention assembled, went on
and nominated for President their least re-
spectacle politician while the Democratic
party, made up of such materials as Mr..
Hoar has described, proceeded TO nominate
man who had no distinction in public life
except that OF being an inflexibly incorrupt
executive officer
Space fails, but not material, for addi.
g A.. ~
IDENTIFY, they are NOT casual; they occur ac.
| cording to recondite law of ''social
| physics that seems to have escaped the at
| tention of writers on polity, and that may
be thus formulated:
When elections are close, the course OF
| political party is inversely as the character
| Of its members.
And the reason that underlies this law Ii
| by no means past finding out. 1t reveals
itself to II very slight study Of the case
The course of party is determined, not by
| its members, but by its leaders, and the
course of the leaders, in close elections, 1:
determined, not by their personal prefer
enees or convictions, but by that necessit,
That is superior to Jove himself. The ne
cesity IN this case, Is the necessity of get
ting votes; and the policy and the nomi
nations of the party are adjusted by til,
leaders, not to obtain the votes that thel
are sure of already, but to obtain the vote
that they have not got Two classes o
voters are considered with respectful at
tention by the party engineers in the coun
ellis for adjusting the platform and the can
didates to each other, and both to the exi
gences of the approaching campaign; first
the voters they hope to win; secondly
the voters they are afraid they may lose
There is no one whose views and prefer
ences are so utterly unimportant, at such
time, as the man who ''belongs to til
| IdarIN y and whose vnte Is a dnad nrInini