THE MUGWUMP ELEMENT.
The purchase of the Presidency in open market, now generally recognized, is less disheartening than the apathetic indifference in which such corruption is regarded by the people. In all communities men may be found to buy, and men to sell, the sacred privilege upon which our great Republic rests; but it is rare—so rare that this experience is almost without precedent—that good citizens, knowing the nature of their free institutions, are willing to have them destroyed without an effort in behalf of their preservation.
To get at not only the fact but the reason of it we must remember that politics to the average citizen has all the fanaticism of religion, and all the fascination of gambling. We have the country divided in two hostile camps, and in these organizations themselves we have lost the objects for which they were organized. This is the tendency of poor human nature the world over. It is probably more pronounced in religion than in any other form. A man will not only fight to the bitter end, but die as a martyr, for a sect whose dogmas he has never read, or, if read, fails to comprehend. Politics is our popular religion. Taking the great mass of our citizens, we are pained to write that it is about our only religion.
We say that we have two hostile camps, in both of which the objects for which they were organized have been entirely lost. The ordinary Republican can give no reason for being such save that he is not a Democrat, and the Democrat has the same reason, if it may be called such. Each will avow, without hesitation, that the other camp is made up of knaves and fools. The folly of thus designating over half our entire voting population does not strike the partisan.
Parties, however, are not called into existence and held together through intellectual processes. They are founded on feeling. For years and years the brightest minds and purest characters preached, with burning eloquence, upon the wrongs of negro slavery, and got ugly epithets and foul missiles in return, if indeed they were listened to at all. At a moment of wild frenzy an armed mob at Charleston shot down our flag. In an instant the entire people of the North rose to arms, and a frightful war was inaugurated. The flag sentiment outweighed the Abolition arguments.
It is not our purpose to give the philosophical view of that contest. We use it only, so far, in illustration. The sectional feeling that brought on that armed contest continues in another direction, and divides the two great parties. It is so intense that each is willing to see the republic under which we live utterly destroyed, so that one may be conquered or the other defeated.
We are all agreed that the ballot is the foundation-stone of our entire political structure. On this was built the form of government given us by the fathers, and was the grand result of all the blood and treasure, of life and property, so patriotically poured out in the Revolution that made us independent. Yet this ballot is openly assailed, its processes corrupted with money, and its usefulness entirely destroyed, without arousing the indignation of an outraged public. Men of wealth, of high social position, members of churches, and leaders in what are called the better classes, subscribe and pay the money knowingly that is to be used in the purchase of "floaters in blocks of five" or more, while voters, well-to-do farmers, and so-called honest laborers are organized willingly into blocks and shamelessly sell that upon which they and their children depend for life, liberty, and a right to a recompense for toil. When the result is announced bonfires are burned, and loud shouts go up amid the roar of artillery, expressive of the joy felt in such a triumph.
These men of means—it makes no odds how the means are accumulated—are not aware that in this they are cutting away the foundations under their feet, and that, too, with ropes about their necks. Their only security, not only to the enjoyment of their property but to their lives, lies in the very government they are so eager to destroy. We have called attention to the fact that humanity suffers more from an inequality of property than from an inequality of political rights. These last are rapidly getting to be recognized and secured in constitutions throughout the civilized world. Kings and emperors have come to be mere figure-heads above constitutions, and the political dignity of the poor man is generally acknowledged. But the poor man remains, and the castle yet rears its lofty front above the hovels of the suffering laborers. Humanity is yet divided between the many who produce all and enjoy nothing, and the few who produce nothing and enjoy all. This is the inequality of property, and governments yet hold the sufferers to their hard condition. It is called "law and order," as sacred in the eyes of the Church as it is potent in courts of justice.
There is no government so poorly fitted to the execution of the hard task of holding labor down as this of the United States. In Europe through the dreary ages the masses have been born and bred to their wretched condition. With us, on the contrary, there has been a great expenditure of toil and treasure to teach labor its rights. In Europe great armies are organized and kept upon a war footing for police duty. We have no such conservative force upon which to rely in our hour of peril, and yet so far our government has held sway through our habitual respect for that which we created. These wealthy corruptors are rapidly destroying this respect. They are teaching the people that their ballots are merchantable products, and their ballot-box a rotten affair.
Violence follows fraud as surely as night follows day, or a thunderstorm a poisoned atmosphere. The day is not distant when these millionaires will be hunting holes in which to hide from the very mobs they are now so assiduously calling into existence. God in his divine mercy forgives us our sins when we are repentant, but the law that governs our being—called nature—knows no forgiveness. The wound given the sapling by the woodman's axe is barked over, but that cut, slight as it seems, remains, and may hasten decay a hundred years after. The wrong done the body politic may fester unseen, but it festers on all the same.
Fortunately for the people there is yet a feature in the situation that gives us hope. We are blessed with no inconsiderable body of men of sufficient sense and conscience to rise above party control and vote in support of good measures and honest, capable men. These are not men dominated by one idea, and devoted to some one measure that is to remedy all our political ills. These are "cranks," so called, because they believe that human nature is constructed like machinery—something like a coffee-mill that has a crank that, if turned and turned vigorously, will put the entire machine in good running order. To some this is temperance, to others the tariff, to a third our common-school system: and so they give their lives to a vociferous demand for help to turn the one peculiar crank.
We refer, not to such as these, but the thoughtful, patriotic few who rise above party obligations to a consideration of their country's good. These men are not organized into a party,—unless the fact of two men thinking and feeling alike make a party,—and, as compared to the Republican and Democratic camp-followers, are few in number. But, in the evenly divided condition of the two organizations, these men hold the balance of power, and are dreaded in consequence. Had it not been for the money used by Republicans, and the treachery practised by a few leading Democrats, these independents would have given New York to the Democracy, and Grover Cleveland would be President for the next four years.
These men are derided, scoffed at, and held in high disdain by the partisans of both parties. They are called Mugwumps; and when this strange epithet is hurled at them the assailant seems to feel relieved. This is no new thing. Among the traditions of the Church is one to the effect that as the devil talks he spits fire. All reformers are treated to this. It is well remembered that in the troublous times of '61 the Mugwumps, then denounced as Abolitionists, came to the front and carried the government through its dark hour of peril to a triumphant close. They were brave, brainy, patriotic men, not disturbed by the abuse heaped upon them.
We are comforted to observe the power of these few men as proved in the debate on the civil-service law of the House when an appropriation was called for to sustain the Commission. The debate proved what we all know—that probably not a member of the House but regards the reform in utter loathing and wrath. And yet, when the vote was taken, but a small minority were willing to put themselves on record in opposition. The same clear appreciation of the evil consequences attending this corruption of the ballot, and the conscience that makes itself felt as that of the people, are forcing a reform in that direction. The time is not distant when the now much-reviled Mugwumps will be regarded, as are the Abolitionists, as the true patriots of the day. God would have forgiven Sodom and Gomorrah could five righteous men have been found in either city: this not out of regard for the five, but from the evidence afforded that if that number existed, these wicked places could not be altogether lost.