POLITICAL METHODS.
With quite sufficient reason, the public mind has long been disturbed by our political tendencies. This dissatisfaction does not arise from the fact that in matters of principle and public policy, intelligent people think we are on dangerous roads. In what are called questions, such as those of banks, tariffs, coinage of silver, payment of the national debt, etc., etc., it may be that the majority would prefer changes of policy; but there is a conviction abroad that we are as a people free to change in these matters if we really and earnestly desire new policies which we are able to define. Our feeling of apprehension springs from the knowledge that our political methods are bad, undemocratic and dangerous, and from a fear that the fountains of public life are being defiled by the wicked spirit of “practical politics.” It is not easy to corrupt the moral sense of such a people as ours. The level of intelligence is high, and patriotic impulses are strong in us. And yet we have gone down some steps. At the end of the war, men physically wrecked refused to take pensions; they would not take pay for a religious self-sacrifice. Now, men who came out of the army without a scratch and are still sound in health swear falsely to obtain pensions. These greedy seekers of pensions did not dream fifteen years ago that they could sink so low. Any one of them would then have said: “What, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?” Their fall is directly traceable to the corruption of the civil service, to the fact that in the theory of our public life, bounties should be given to men who handle political organizations successfully. Salaries for civil service are bounties to be had by scrambling for them, or by earning them in the service of Party.
The theory of “practical politics” converts the salaries paid for public service into a pool which parties are organized to secure for distribution among the sergeants, corporals, lieutenants, captains, colonels and generals of the order. “What are we here for,” cried a delegate in the Republican National Convention of 1880, “if we are not after the offices?” That indignant question expressed the very heart of the practical politicians. A party, in his view, is an organization to get offices. And as much of its work is, in the same view, secret, dirty and wicked work, he believes that the party should be under the strict control of “bosses.” Each town should have its leader, all the town leaders should be under the control of the county leader, and county leaders should obey the state “boss”—and the edifice should be crowned with a national committee of “bosses.” This committee the politicians struggled to create by the famous theory of “the courtesy of the Senate.” That theory made the President the clerk of the party’s Senators in each state. It gave Senator Conkling the vast Federal “patronage” of New York to distribute at his will. The edifice was not crowned; the Senatorial “boss” system went down in the terrible struggle of the spring of 1881. Our readers know that history. We do not recall it to reproach anybody. Senator Conkling was the victim of a theory that he ought, under the rule of “the courtesy of the Senate,” to be President within the state of New York. The theory is silent now; it will rise again if the people do not disestablish political machines in towns, cities, counties and states.
Turning to a more gloomy side of the subject, we observe that there has been a vast increase in the amount of money spent in politics. Thousands of persons are, while we pen these lines, living on the patrons who hire them and send them forth to “mould public opinion”—or in the choicer phrase of the men themselves, “to set things up.” It is the business of this perambulating political machine to invent and distribute lies, to purchase useful sub-agents, to promise funds for the election day bribery. The floating vote increases each year, and four-fifths of this vote is a corrupt vote—the voters stand about the market place waiting until some man shall hire them. We tolerate and smile at all this business—except the concealed bribery—and this tolerance of ours is the sign that the malarious atmosphere of “practical politics” is beginning to weaken our moral sense. If we are still in full vigor, this year will probably afford us a large number of opportunities to wreck the local political machine—without distinction of party. Reform will have to begin by disestablishing local machines and bruising with conscience votes the men who corrupt the popular verdict with money.
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
We are glad, though at a late hour, to pay, with many others, our tribute to the ability and worth of Wendell Phillips, and to review his life and work. Glad to do this, for his life was clean and clear, the kind men love to honor; his work was that of the philanthropist and patriot. He had entered his seventy-third year, having been born November 29, 1811, in a house which is still standing on the lower corner of Beacon and Walnut streets, Boston. He came from one of Boston’s aristocratic families; for several generations the Phillipses were well known, rich and influential. His father, John Phillips, was chosen first mayor of Boston in 1822, in a triangular contest, with Harrison Gray Otis and Josiah Quincy as rival candidates. Young Phillips had the best of educational advantages. He prepared for college at the famous Boston Latin School; entered Harvard in his sixteenth, and graduated in his twentieth year. One of his classmates was the historian Motley, a man, like Phillips, of handsome person, of courtly manners, and high social position. From college Phillips passed to the Cambridge Law School, from which he graduated in 1833, and the following year he was admitted to the bar. But he was not long to follow the law.
The public career of this man whose name is known in every land, dates from a certain illustrious meeting held in Faneuil Hall, Boston, in 1837. It was an era of great excitement. In Congress, John Quincy Adams, the undaunted, was presenting petitions for the abolition of slavery, in the midst of the howls and execrations of the friends of the institution. Elijah I. Lovejoy had been murdered by a pro-slavery mob at Alton, Illinois, while defending his printing press. Two years before, Boston had witnessed the mobbing of Garrison. Phillips himself was a witness of the spectacle, and the following year he joined the American Anti-Slavery Society. A meeting was called in Faneuil Hall by Dr. Channing and other friends of freedom to express indignation over Lovejoy’s murder. That meeting will long live in history. Jonathan Phillips, a second cousin of Wendell, presided. Dr. Channing and others spoke. At length, the Attorney-General of the State, James T. Austin, took the platform and delivered a speech in direct opposition to the sentiments which had been expressed. It was not without effect. The people cheered as the speaker declared that Lovejoy died as the fool dieth, and placed his murderers by the side of the men who destroyed the tea in Boston Harbor. The meeting, designed to be one of indignation for the murder of Lovejoy, bid fair to turn into a meeting of approbation. But Wendell Phillips was the next speaker, and he had not spoken long before the tide was again reversed. This, his first public plea for free speech, human freedom and equal rights, was wonderfully effective. It carried the audience and established at once the speaker’s fame as the foremost orator of the anti-slavery cause.
From this time on, until in those years of blood the shackles were struck from the slaves of America, Phillips was a man of one work. He lived for the cause of abolition. His motto might have been: “One thing I do.” By the side of Garrison he stood, in full sympathy with his ideas. His name has long been the synonym of extreme radicalism. He held, with Garrison, that the constitution was “a league with hell,” and would not vote, or take an oath to support the iniquitous document. In the years before the war of the rebellion, he freely advocated a dissolution of the Union; but when the war came, he was found a stanch defender of the Union cause. In that band of once execrated, but now honored abolitionists, who “prepared the way of the Lord,” there may have been others who did as effective work as Wendell Phillips; but he was the incomparable orator, gifted with eloquent speech to a degree unapproachable. Stories of his power over an audience will long be told. Delightedly the people have listened to his silver tongue and chaste diction when he spoke upon purely literary themes; the lyceum in our land had no more popular lecturer. But he will live in our history as the matchless abolitionist orator. Since the death of slavery he has been a prominent worker in different reform movements, and the advocate—as it seems to us—of certain vagaries, but his fame is inseparably connected with the colored race, of whose rights he was the devoted, unselfish, and fearless champion. His private life was singularly simple, sweet and beautiful. His wife, an invalid of many years, his devotion to whom was beautiful indeed, survives him; and an adopted daughter, Mrs. Smalley, wife of the well known newspaper correspondent, is also left to mourn his loss.