The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-09-15

many where the educated classes are nota-
bly ambitious TO enter politics and devote
their lives to the public service. In Eng
land the educated classes in politics have
furnished the most radical champions of
enlarged freedom from the days of Fox,
and Pitt, both scions of the aristocracy,
down TO Peel and Gladstone, but Ameri-
can culture in politics has always been
conspicuously apathetic when not abso-
lutely aggressive in its attitude 10 the
cause of enlarged popular liberty.
From 1885 to 1861 the Egyptian bunker
ism of Harvard College was voiced in pol
tics by Everett. Otis. FELTON,, Winthrop
and Choate, men who grew warm and elo-
quent over dead literatures and yet viewed
with silent and contemptuous Indifference
the enslayement of living men. To this
kind of culture in politics book was bet
ter than man; a wrong wrought the
English language was a greater offence
than crime against English liberty, and
Thoreau aptly said of this kind of cul-
ture that il Thought more of the
slant Of Greek accent then it did of shor-
ing up falling man." The average Mug
wump is sometimes a literary dandy, who
Is nothing if not hypercritical of his day
and generation; he is the genius of discon-
tent and the petty architect of disorgani-
cation; he dawdles about clubs and con-
dennis the pursuit of politics as inconsls-
tent with culture and refinement. The
Mugwump is not seldom social dandy
moi Ha A nOilfirgs
would like to import his politics from
England as he does his trousers.
Out of the conceit; the diIletantism of
literary dandies; the frivolity of social
dandies, and the inane college athleticism
with diploma attached, the ranks of
American politics get but few stalwart re-
cruits; the present leaders came from the
masses, for the reason that few college
men are qualified by their knowledge 10
be the political leaders Of other men. The
result is that the dull, so-caled educated
lump or rump of American politics. finding
that it cannot lead, Immediately de-
votes itself to finding fault with the
work of those who do lead, and the con-
sequence is that so long as there are liter
airy dandies and social snobs in the world
there will be Mugwumps in both parties.
This accounts for Democratic mugwumps,
like Everett P. Wheeler, e. j. Phelps and
the late George III. Pendleton; for Repub-
llcan mugwumps, like George William
Curtis, Professor Everett, Colonel Higgin-
son, John +. Andrew, Sherman Hoar.
These men have plenty of culture, have
superior intellectual quality, but il stands
for nothing SO much as the ceaselessly
critical genius, which is content with
nothing which it did not invent or create:
it will not ride with the driver,
even when it knows perfectly well
that it never drove the team a day with
out ditching it. Small natural capacity
for action, organization. compromise. exc
cution, for leadership, married to a posi-
lively brilliant genius for finding fault,
for cursing the wagon because it is not al
ways hitched to star, is the character
istic mark of the Mugwump in either
party. The Mugwump on this earth will
never be really happy until we import
and adopt the English civil service sys-
TEN with life tenure for educated inca
pables attached, and the Mugwump in
heaven will add one more to that band of
eccentric angels who complain that they
are not fully happy because their halos
do not tit their beatific brows.