The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-01-14

popular freedom as is compatible with
public safety; where the disgusting license
Of our republic is unknown. The favorite
subject Of adulation with these closet
political critics and scholastic snobs Is the
constitutional monarchy of England,
which seems 10 them TO permit all the
liberty that it Is safe for man 20 be en-
lowed with without drifting toward an
archy and mobocracy.
Our own republic, It may be granted, il
in state Of industrial unrest 70 the point
of occasional turbulence in our great
cities East and West, and these wise
prophets of pessimism IN our periodical
literature are constantly singing the death
song of our experiment" The evils Of
our ignorant suffrage are enlarged upon;
our few feeble plants of socialism and COM
munism are cited as serious symptoms of
they really are, mere superficial func-
tional alterations from perfect political
health. The financial lunacy of the few Is
magnifed, while the sound business sense
and commercial honesty of the many is
ignored in the anxiety ofthese doctrinaires
to prove their theory that representative
democracy is delusion and snare.
The truth is our politics do not suffer by
comparison with those of Great Britain.
As late as 1867 the English Beverly bribery
commission reported that out of con-
stituency of 1, 100 about 500 were open to
bribery and other corrupt influences, and
the case of Beverly was only one sample
in multitude Of instances of prevalent
bribery. So corrupt is the English field of
politics that corrupt and illegal prac-
tees prevention act" was passed in 1888,
which contains very minute and stringent
provisions. Not only are English politics
quite as corrupt as our own, but they are
more brutal and ferocious. The Bel
fast riots are q conspicuous ex-
ample, and other terrible industrial
or political riots have disfig-
ured the history of England during
the reign of Victoria Gladstone's carriage
has been more than once stoned: election
MODS have often assaulted and beaten
English gentlemen of rank and family who
were candidates or partisans of candidates.
At the last English general election two
political speakers of high rank were rudely
hustled from the Platform by the crowd
and dozen meetings were utterly
wrecked. 1t is not ten years since an
English mob seized the opposition candi-
date in his carriage and dragged carriage
and candidate into the sea and left him
there to get out and ashore as best
he could. With limited suffrage, COM
pared with our universal ballot, there is
at least as much corruption, and certainly
more brutality and riot at English cleo
tons than at our own. The only excep-
ton is at the South, where the race quar-
rels between the ruling whites and the
recently servile blacks explode in outrages
of blood and fraud. Where slavery did
not exist at the outbreak of the war our
American politics are at least as pure and
altogether more peaceable than those of
our English cousins. The American is
given to brass bands and professions, but
seldom falls to fighting at the North,
while election rioting has always been
during English elections.
England has ten disturbing questions
before her for future settlement to one
that plaques our public. Manhood suffrage,
free primary schools, the adjustment
of primogeniture and the law of entail,
the multiplication of land owners, reform
in taxation, the disestablishment and dis
= r A.
guishment of the house of lords, the
hereditary branch of her legislature, and
the substitution of an elective body like
our Senate, are among the objects of radi-
cal effort for the next fifty years in order
ito help make life worth living for the
tens of thousands in England to whom it
is now prolonged misery"