POLITICS AS A FORM OF CIVIL WAR. 601 



lature. Little or no heed is given to the primary question of capacity 

 and public interests. Political considerations — that is, ability to help 

 or to harm some one — control all elections and appointments. 

 What is the next thing done? It is the preparation, introduction, 

 discussion, and passage of the measures thought to be essential to 

 the preservation of civilization. Here again political considerations 

 control action. Such measures are introduced as will strengthen 

 members with their constituents, or promote " the general welfare " 

 of the party. Very rarely have they " the general welfare " of the 

 public in view. Sometimes they seek to change district boundaries in 

 such a way as to keep the opposition in a perpetual minority. Some- 

 times they have no other motive than the extortion of blackmail from 

 individuals or corporations. Sometimes their object is to throw " sop 

 to Cerberus " — that is, to pacify troublesome reformers within the 

 party, like the prohibitionists and the civil-service reformers. Some- 

 times they authorize investigations into a department or a munici- 

 pality with the hope that discoveries will be made that will assist 

 the party in power or injure the party out of power; it happens not 

 infrequently that they are undertaken to smother some scandal, like 

 the mismanagement of the Pennsylvania treasury, or to whitewash 

 some rascal. Sometimes they create commissions, superintendents, 

 or inspectors, or other offices to provide rewards for party hacks and 

 heelers. Finally, there are the appropriation bills. Only a person 

 ignorant of the ways of legislators could be so simple-minded as to 

 imagine that they are miracles of economy, or that they are any- 

 thing else but the products of that clumsy but effective system of pil- 

 laging known as log-rolling, which enables each to get what he wants 

 with the smallest regard for the interests of the taxpayer. 



It is, however, during the debates over these wise and patriotic 

 measures that the public is favored with the most edifying exhibition 

 of the universal contempt of the legislator for its interests. They dis- 

 close all the scandalous practices of a political campaign. There are 

 misrepresentations, recriminations, and not infrequently, as in the 

 case of Sumner, personal assaults. A perverse inclination always 

 exists toward those discussions that will put some one " in a hole," or 

 enable some one to arouse party passion. For this purpose nothing 

 is so effective as a foreign question, like a Cuban belligerency resolu- 

 tion, or a treaty for the annexation of Hawaii, or a domestic ques- 

 tion, like responsibility for the crime of 1873, or the panic of 1893, 

 or a comparison of party devotion to the interests of the " old soldier." 

 Not the slightest heed, as has been shown on several occasions during 

 the past few years, is paid to the shock that may be given to business 

 or to the disturbance of pacific relations with foreign powers. In 

 fact, the greater the danger involved in the discussion of a delicate 



VOL. L1V. — 44 



