The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1905-04-12
NECESSARY TO GOVERNMENT

Mr.. Jerome, the famous New York
| city prosecutor, is an able man and a
refor1ner, but he takes a superficial
view when he berates parties as the
main obstacle to good government, and
declares that reform is conditioned
largely upon the abolition of the party
| tie. A great many good and Jealous
men have thought this and acted upon
it until they learned something by ex-
perience
Bad government is largely supported.
it is true, by making the party a
fetch. When a voter agrees to act
contrary to his inmost conviction of
right and wrong, when he casts a bal
lot for a candidate VIGOROUSLY corrupt
or inefficient, when he supports meas
to be hostile to the public good, then
he is a traitor to the party itself. All
parties must be punished and disci-
plined when they transgress the known
laws of morality. This is not, how
ever, to say that the party itself must
be destroyed
The man of sincere and upright con-
viction who valves his personal opin-
ions, be they well founded or mere
prejudices. for the sake of party is act
ing sensibly and conscientiously. The
living together in society at all in
wolves a multitude of such compro-
misses. They are inseparable from DEM
ocratic government. If the right Of
private judgment and the determina-
ton to act upon it extends to the mi
nutest detail, then democratic govern
ment would become impossible No
two men could ever agree upon any
thing, because their opinions, taken as
whole, differ as strikingly as their
faces. They could never agree upon
anything. A man must modify his
opinion in nonessentials, give and
take and accept, where conscience is
not concerned, the will of the majority
as greater and better than his own. 1t
is rule absolutely inevitable wher-
ever two or more men attempt to do
anything in common.
This is the ground plan of all asso-
ciated action. 1t is the obvious reason
why political parties are necessary.
No government has ever been able to
get along without them; nor can we
conceive, unless human nature changes
radically, how it ever can. To encour-
age revolt from party merely because
1t is party, to laud that cocky DISPOSE
ton of the average individual to assert
the right of private judgment merely
in order that he may show his own
imagined superiority, promotes disin-
tegration and is the parent not of good
government but of bad.
An independent in politics for the
sake Of some one great unsuitable
conviction, to which he is ready to be-
come martyr if necessary, is a noble
sight. A man who thinks himself an
independent but is merely trying to
lord it over others, forcing petty de-
tails of his belief forever into promi-
hence, ordering others to come to him
under penalty of his displeasure and
alienation, is one of the most forbid
ding and useless things on Gods green
earth.
After all is said and done, reform
must come through the agency of par
ties, and just and honest governments
must be conducted by them. 1t is the
province of the Independent, however,
to soften party harshness, to correct
and modify its extremes, to prevent or
to punish its mistakes. The man who
does not hold through all this a real
belief in party and an affection for it
lacks something in the perfection of
citizenship or in strength of intelli-
gence- We have got so into the habit
of berating party that we overlook the
sure degeneracy of the man who alb
jures all party relations, and yet par
ticipates in public life, into a hopeless
crank or an eternal scold. II it is bad
to defy party, it is worse to ignore its
true relation to the life and activities
of man.