POLITICS AS A FORM OF CIVIL WAR. 597 



has been from $3,283,000 in 1887 to $23,480,000 in 1897. In 

 other departments the increase has ranged from nineteen per cent 

 in the legislative and twenty-three in the diplomatic and consular 

 to seventy in the Indian, seventy-seven in the post office and river 

 and harbor, and one hundred and thirty-three in the pension. An- 

 other manifestation is the pressing demand for the extension of the 

 pension system to civil officials. Already the system has been ex- 

 tended to policemen and firemen. In some States the teachers in the 

 public schools receive pensions, and in others the clamor for this form 

 of taxation is loud and persistent. At the present time a powerful 

 movement is in progress to pension the civil servants of the Govern- 

 ment. Still another manifestation is the passage of laws in revival 

 of the old trade and professional corporations. For a long time those 

 in protection of the legal and medical professions have been on the 

 statute-books, if not always in force. But, as always happens, these 

 bad precedents have been used as arguments in favor of the plumbers, 

 barbers, dentists, druggists, and other trades and professions. But 

 the most absurd manifestation is the social classification of Govern- 

 ment employees in accordance with the size of their salaries, a form 

 of folly particularly apparent in Washington, and the establishment 

 of patriotic and other societies, like the Sons and Daughters of the 

 American Revolution, the Baronial Order of Runnymede, and the 

 Royal Order of the Crown, that create social distinctions based, not 

 upon character and ability, but upon heredity. Could anything be 

 more un-American, to use the current word, or hostile to the spirit of 

 a free democracy? 



In the intellectual domain politics works a greater havoc than in 

 the social. Politicians can no more tolerate independence in thought 

 and action than Charles V or Louis XIV or Napoleon I. " I have 

 never had confidence in political movements which pretend to be free 

 from politics," said the Governor of New York at the close of the 

 campaign that restored Tammany Hall to power in the metropolis, 

 showing that the intolerance of this form of warfare does not differ 

 from that of any other. " A creed that is worth maintaining at all," 

 he added, using an argument made familiar by the agents of bigotry 

 everywhere, " is worth maintaining all the time. . . . Do not put 

 your faith in those that hide behind the pretense of nonpartisanship," 

 he continued, striking a deadly blow at all party traitors; "it is a 

 device to trap the thoughtless and unsuspecting." As was shown 

 during the Blaine-Cleveland campaign of 1884, politicians treat dis- 

 sent as proof of unmistakable moral and intellectual baseness. Only 

 the progress of civilization prevents them from pouncing upon such 

 men as George William Curtis, Carl Schurz, and Wayne McVeagh 

 with the ferocity of the familiars of the Inquisition. As it is, they are 



