Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-08-05

OF tue ulteQ states mas performed tnlS
horrible plunge from the higher to the
lower level? It is the division of this
great population of the new world into
two antagonistic hosts set over the one
against the other in the manner of battle,
each hosts commanded by certain gen.
erals and subordinates in whose interests
the war is conducted. The thing against
which Washington warned and conjured
bis countrymen has actually come to
pass, and the result is that the bottom of
american political society is on top, and
the top is everywhere at the bottom.
Some men mutually believe that the
existing order, wherever II is, ought to
he upheld and perpetrated. Others,
with equally sincerity. believe that the
existing order and tendency are not so
good as the order and tendency which
existed formerly. Such persons look to
the past for all their models and types
and standards of excellence. Still q
third class of minds, certainly as honest
and vigorous as any, break away from
the present and renounce the past. They
see in the past only despotlsm, oppres-
sion and wrong. They see i'll the present
only the perperuation of the past; but in
the future they Sc everything. They
accordingly strain in the direction of the
future. All their faculties are busy
with the project and work sof reform.
The more extreme of this class are per-
petuai revolutionists, just as the extrem-
lists of the second class are medievals and
reaotionists.
1t is easy to see from this analy sis how
the political society of every modern
state is normally and benefcially divided
into a center, left and a right. The
center would perpetuate the existing or
der, the right would return to the past,
the left would break away from the eX-
listing order, spurn the past and hurry to
the future. 1t is in the happy balance
which may be, and sometimes is, eff
fected among these opposite forces that
the stately ship of progress sails on
across the wide and sometimes stormy
oceans of history. Thus far the political
division of sentiment among men sub
serves good purpose in equaliZing the
energies of the state aud directing the
tendencies and general destiny of the
public life of people.
What, then, is the modern political
party? Practically it is an organization
of a few men in q great state, constitute
ing d sort of close corporation, having
one single Interior end III view, and that
is their own advantage. In order that
such a body of men may get power, it is
necessary that they profess something.
What their profession Is depends exclu-
sively upon what they think is best cal
culated to take the country in. There
are always lying about the surface of
human society certain questions in which
the people at large, from patriotic or
other considerations, are likely TO take an
interest. The party maker searches dill
gently among these questions to find one
or more which he thinks are likely, II
famed with little fallacious oratory
and Fictitious discussion, to break into
flame. So the question is taken up, and
all the elaborate machinery which q CEN
fury of seIf-Interest has invented is i'm
mediately put into operation to create or
perpetuate an issue. People are actually
made to believe that the interests of the
country depend upon the decision of this
question or that question by their votes.
They are made to believe that that sub
lime product of reason and eternity
called history is created by drum-majors
and central committees. They are
taught that they should leave their corn
fields anu their workshops in the village
and rally at the call of some peripatetic
demag que who is hired out of corrup-
ton fund, collected from the beneficial
ries, to go about the country explaining
and perorating about the ''burning issues
which now divide the American people. -
Sometimes a man of sense and reflection
attends one of the meetings and stands
like Anacharsis on the edge of the crowd
to hear the grafton, or perhaps to con-
tribute feeblY by his presence to the
proposed salvation of the country. What
must be the real impression made on the
mind of such man under such circum-
stances? He listens for awhile at the
oratory. He sees his country's flag at
the back of the platform. He watches
the drummer as he pounds his booming
war tub, and then considers the antics of
the orator as he goes up and down the
platform, roaring and cavorting like a
wild ass of the Assyrian desert filling his
belly with the east wind, and then turns
on his hesl toward the seclusion of his
own home, the quiet OF his own study,
saying as he walks along and communes
with himself: "How long, o Lord how
long?"
And yet this performance in the public
square is at present, and has been for
more than half a century, the dominant
fact in American society," OF course
orators and teachers go about telling you
something else. They say that our pub
lie shoots, or our churches, or our rail-
road enterprises, or our great cities, or
our marvellous industries, or our expan-
sion as a people from east to west, from
north to south, are the dominant fact in
American society. But it is not SO; that
is, 1t is not so as things go. The DOM
inant fact In American society Is that
political meeting which the thoughtful
man attended and went away from with
to which every other element of power
and influence In the public and the pri-
vate life in the United States bends q
humble, and am sorry to say, a patient
knee. That is the thing after which the
great Protestant church marches at the
tau of the procession. That is the thing
which, beginning far back in the history
of our republic, under the modest name
of convention, at length achieved auton-
omy, gained an independent life of its
own, grew and expanded until Its jaws
were full of dragon's teeth and its throat
sufficiently enlarged to swallow at a guIp
every form of opposition that appears in
its pathway. That Is the thing that has
gone waIlowing and sprawIing and roar
ing through the United States, crushing
and deEouring and devastating the land,
living on the fruits of industry, gather
ing the rewards due to enterprise and
blasting not only the blossoms and fruits,