The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1893-06-30
OUR POLITICAL PARTIES.
Ingalls, Points Out the Principles
that Divide Voters.
The Republican Party the Party of Prog
ress, the Democratic Party the Party
of Inertia-woman Suf-
frage.
From the St. Louis Globe.Democra.l

L
| Political parties, like poets, are born
and not made. They are neither part
nerships nor Incorporated societies, nor
joint stock companies, nor artificial be-
ings created by law. They grow by
an interior vitality, and are not planned
nor constructed. They have no archi-
tects nor builders, and when their
forces are spent and their functions
performed they disappear. A party is
a social solidarity, natural group in
the state, composed of men of common
memories, kindred convictions, similar
sympathies, interests and aspirations
upon questions affecting the civil and
political rights of its members and the
continuance of the national life. Its
existence does not depend upon success
or defeat, but upon necessity. 1t can
not be improvised. nor can it be eXtir-
pated by hostile majorities. When it
! expires it is from it's inherent limita-
/ tions.
Parties are indispensable to people
that are free, and it is only by their ac-
tivity and collision that the latent
| forces of the state are evoked and its
! highest glory attained The citizen
who affects to be better than any party
! is public enemy, and the statesman
who asserts that he is greater than any
! party is either a charlatan or novice.
AS parties cannot be made to order.
neither can issues be formulated on the
| spur of the moment. Platforms are
| the creeds of parties, their articles of
| faith, the expression of their conscious
ness and of the phenomena of their in
ner life. There are no impromptu
platforms. Key-notes utter themselves
| and war cries have no grammar
! Names and descriptions are immaterial.
The democratic and republican parties
have changed their names. as dominos
are changed at a masquerade, but their
substance and principles are immuta-
BILE.
| RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM.
The political orbit of the United
| States has been determined from the
| beginning by the conflict between two
theories which may be likened in
general way to the centipetal and CEN
| trifugal forces of the solar system, the
tendency towards and away from CEN
tralization of power. as the planets are
drawn to and repealed from the sun
and thus retained in their eternal cir
| cult. The Germans use the word par
ticularism'' to signify devotion to the
| interests of a province or Il kingdom
rather than to the empire, and in our
politics the contest has been between
| particularism and nationalism, between
| liberalism and strict construction of the
constitution. On the one side are con-
servatives. on the other radicals. The
motto of one party is ''En avant''-Go
ahead: of the other, ''Laissez faire'-
Let alone. One is the engine, the other
| is the brake. Here is inertia. That
| is democracy. There is progress.
| That is republicanism. Both are
| indispensable to national per-
manence and development. The
pendulum has alternately swung from
| one to the other. but the hands have
recorded constant advance round the
dial of the century. Great as have oc-
casionally been the majorities in the
electoral college. the popular vote for
MANY administrations has been divided
with practical equality between these
two theories of government. There
have been casual and temporary associ-
ations, quasi-political. calling them
selves parties, based upon moral, edu-
cational, ecclesiastical and social ques-
| tions, but history does not concern
itself with them. They are eddies in
/ the current. collecting debris, rubbish
and offal. which drifts in an aimless
circle for awhile, and then sinks and is
swept away.
A REPUBLICAN VIEW OF DEMOCRACY.
Macaulay describes class of En-
| glishmen who preferred to perish by
precedent rather than to be saved by
| innovation. In the United States these
would be democrats, and in casting the
political horoscope the continued ex-
| istence of the democratic party. its sue
cessors and assigns. must be taken for
granted as inevitable. 1t is imperish-
able, because it rests upon the basis of
negation. 1t is opposed to any change
| in the status quo We're there no dem
ocratic party in being it would be in
simultaneously evolved upon the pre-
sentation of any programme proposing
affirmative action by the government
in any direction upon any subject
| At every step of our historic advance
toward nationality the democratic party
| has been sIeadfast and immovable in
opposition. All that has been done has
been in violation of the constitution.
Since it has been accomplished they
acquieSce, but insist that nothing more
shall be done. They opposed the coer-
cion of the seeding states, the draft,
national banks. the issue of bonds, the
| legal tender act, the abolition of slav-
cry. the prosecution of the war. negro
suffrage, resumption of specie pay
ments, the homestead laws, railroad
land grants and protective tariff as
unconstitutional. but there is no more
| danger of discrimination against inn
! portant American industries by Cleve-
! lands administration than there is of
Reputation of the national debt or the
abrogation of the constitutional amend
ments.
Democrats have politically neither
| conscience, courage nor convictions.
They are consistent in nothing but in
consistency. They have made no pro-
! LESSONS they have not abandoned, adj
vocated no policy from which they
have not retreated. They have alter
nately denounced and supported every
measure advanced by their adversaries,
and sometimes simultaneously. as when
they have demanded for the sugar of
Louisiana the protection they have de-
MED to the iron of Pennsylvania.
Pretending to be in favor of the free
coinage of silver. they supported a pres
dental candidate whom they knew to
be unalterably opposed to it, and who
would promptly veto bill should it
| mass His prODosition for an income