CHAPTER XVIII.—BOLTING THE TICKET.
It was the year of a great political revival—coming none too soon.
It is a part of the history of human progress that grand moral movements, once they have fulfilled their immediate purpose, swing backward to the establishment of some new abuse. The net gain is, no doubt, century by century, continuous. But to those who look for episodic interest rather than epochal meaning the march of the race must often seem crab like—as when a Henry VIII utilizes a reforming revolt to crush and plunder a vast system of benefaction, and create a hard-fisted, commercial plutocracy with one hand, while calling into existence with the other a permanent class of starving poor; or when a Bonaparte makes the waning impetus of a democratic uprising serve his imperial ambition, and converts the legions of the Republic into the guards of a Caesar.
So, in our own time, in our own country, craft and greed had climbed to the control of a great organization, baptized in the name of Freedom and excited still with the thoughts of its tremendous achievements, and diverted its forces to the service of base ends.
This ignoble mastery had not gone unchallenged. More than one revolt against it had given promise, for a little, of success. But each in its failure had but repeated the familiar experience of yeomanry against trained troops, of sporadic, scattering popular impulses against the cool, consecutive plans of organized power. But it is the fate of despotisms, whether of a man or of a machine, to by excesses sap their own foundations. There came a time when the political usurpers who, through the listlessness of some citizens, the ancient prejudices of others, the mean lust for profit and place of still a third class, had attained power, went just a step too far.
As this is a romance, and not a political history, it is permitted to avoid both dates and any details which might seem to fix a particular occurrence, and ask the reader to conceive that the crisis grew out of the manner in which these politicians obtained control of an imaginary but important Convention—that they bribed delegates, that they forged telegrams to secure a majority for themselves on the organizing committee, and that they made drunk the poor tool they had selected for Chairman and locked him in his hotel room that he might not escape them. It strains credulity to assume all this, I know, but its acceptance is essential to the story. Fortunately it is less difficult to credit the corollary—that the decent people of the State, led by an honest press, rose en masse and pulverized this machine at the following election.
It was at the outset of this crisis that Seth became Editor of the Tecumseh Chronicle. The young man had been, it need scarcely be said, deeply interested in the events which led up to it, and when the first of the party papers came out frankly, the morning after the Convention, refusing to support its nominations, he was in a tremor of delight. He scarcely dared hope that the Chronicle would follow their lead, but still he did hope. Mr. Samboye remained downstairs in consultation with Mr. Workman longer than usual on that eventful forenoon. They were settling the policy of the paper, of course, and the young news editor, perfunctorily weeding out copy for the “first side,” was conscious all the while of being eagerly anxious to know what this policy was to be.
Mr. Samboye presently came up, took his seat without the ordinary prelude of conversation, and began writing. He finished his article, still without a word to any one, and took it down to Mr. Workman. He was absent but a few moments. On his return Seth asked him: