498 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is enforced. Leaders spring up to take command of the political 

 organizations, the modern condottieri, always agents of crime and 

 despotism. They fight campaigns as they would fight battles ; and 

 they fight them with no more principle than the lawless bands 

 that plundered Italy and Spain at the close of the middle ages.* If 

 divided counsels are fatal in war, they are' equally fatal in politics. 

 Nothing, therefore, becomes more odious than independence in 

 thought and action ; and nothing is more sternly rebuked, and, if 

 possible, severely punished. \ Only the utmost fidelity is approved, 

 and rewarded with either appointments, or contracts, or legislative 

 favors. The policy adopted is, not what is right, but what is ex- 

 pedient. The demoralizing principles of Jesuitism assume con- 

 trol, and the end, which is party triumph, is made to justify its 

 achievement by any means. Hence, caucus tricks and crimes, 

 convention intrigue and outrage, bribery and fraud at elections, 

 and sophistry and falsehood in political discussion. Hence, the 

 exclusion from public life of men that loathe these practices and 

 refuse to sell their souls to the Mephistopheles of politics. Hence 

 the dominance of men, including even the " scholar in politics," 

 so quickly debased, that never hesitate to purchase power by the 

 creation of offices or by the plunder of the rich. Hence the low 

 tone, the scenes of violence, and the marked decadence of all legis- 

 lative bodies in every part of the world. 



No fine phrases of social or political speculation can mask the 

 odium of the fact that the spirit of democracy, like that of other 



* The parallel is quite perfect. It will be remembered that the Italian freebooters on 

 both sides used to have " rings " that is, understandings by which they profited as much ag 

 possible from their warfare and at the same time did each other as little damage as possible. 

 See Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. ii, p. 279. In Spain, as in the United States, it 

 was found necessary for good citizens to band themselves together to secure protection from 

 those that should have protected them. The Hermandad, or Holy Brotherhood, was the 

 analogue of our Good Government Clubs, Citizens' Unions, etc. (Ferdinand and Isabella, 

 vol. i, pp. 26, 186.) By the way, there could be no more convincing evidence of the capa- 

 city of people to look after themselves without the aid of the state that is, the politician's 

 than the existence of such organizations as these clubs and unions throughout the country 

 to look after the politicians. Is it not absurd to suppose people that have to form volun- 

 tary organizations to watch their government and to prevent it from driving them into 

 bankruptcy by its incompetency and dishonesty are unfitted to form voluntary organizations 

 to undertake enterprises that social reformers have come to imagine government alone fitted 

 to undertake ? 



f A striking example of this kind of intolerance is to be found in Senator Platt's letter 

 of May 8, 1897, on the Citizens' Union of New York. " It can't prance around," he said, 

 " with the agile irresponsibility of a self-constituted committee of ' best citizens.' It can 

 agree to no basis of union which substitutes the government of an individual acting wholly 

 on his own whims and caprices for the rule of an organized responsible party performing 

 an authorized party policy." Rather than have good government independent of any par- 

 ticular party organization, Senator Platt, echoing the sentiment of his lieutenant, Mr. Lau- 

 terbach, would see the triumph of hs enemies. 



