The South in seeking relief need not delude herself by reliance upon any party to reform evils and restore prosperity. Some difficulties are independent of party action, or even political policy, and have their origin in more general causes. A portion of the commercial and financial troubles is probably due to some "wider misadjustment of labor and capital" than can be rectified by one country, and requires broad and sound statesmanship. The Republican party is held together, in part, by the "cohesive power of public plunder," or compacted into unity by distrust or hatred of the South. The Democratic party, as unsound as its antagonist on the vital questions of tariff, currency, finances, and the character of the General Government, has practised the fatal maxim that "to the victors belong the spoils," and, in special localities, has been implicated in corruption. The history of parties in England and the United States shows that any party long in power will become corrupt. To rely upon any party, or the wisdom or sense of justice of any government, for protection of property or guaranty of civil or religious liberty, is to lean upon a broken reed; for rights never enforce themselves, and are soon gone unless sustained by more potent means than the justice or honor of those in power. A President is impotent of himself, soon passes into private life, and is at best but a man.
Alike futile is the notion, sometimes finding audible expression, that an arbitrary government or a monarchy would bring relief. Our fathers, in throwing off a kingly government and setting up a constitutional republic, acted in the full light thrown on popular rights by all preceding history. They did not live in prehistoric or barbaric times, but acted with rare wisdom and patriotism. More sagacious men never planned a government, and blindly and suicidally would we act to prefer or accept a monarchy. The centuries of the past are eloquent with wisdom and plethoric with instructive examples on this subject. God has never given any exclusive rights to special families, and all historical records confirm, with the Scriptures, the folly of choosing a king. How often in such governments is public policy dependent on royal whims, on palace intrigues, on the taste or caprice of the boudoir! Monarchy has been the rule of violence; inequality and centralization are of its essence. The rebellion in England and the French revolution were the long-delayed protests of outraged peoples against ruinous taxation and hurtful tyranny and cankerous corruption. When the disgraceful crimes by men in high places were exposed last year European journals made themselves merry over the corruptions which they alleged were the legitimate outgrowths of democratic institutions. In the first place, our Government is not a democracy, and never was intended to be. Secondly, monarchies are not in a condition to cast the first stone. Italy, Spain, Austria, Russia, and France have had corruption enough to make them blush. As England is held up for our copying, and is less censurable than the others, I cite a few instances from her history. May, in "Constitutional History of England," Vol. I., p. 299 says: "Our Parliamentary history has been tainted with this disgrace of vulgar bribes for political support from the reign of Charles II. far into that of George III." For shamefulness of public life Charles II. stands without a rival. He was a pensioner of the King of France, and applied to his own privy purse large sums of money which had been appropriated by Parliament for carrying on the war. The equipoise designed to be secured in the National Legislature by the House of Commons was defeated because the House was at once dependent and corrupt. Borough nominations, places, pensions, contracts, shares in loans and lotteries, and even pecuniary bribes, secured the ascendency of Crown and Lords in the councils and government of the State. Sunderland, Secretary of State under James II., stipulated to receive 25,000 crowns from the King of France for services to be rendered. Walpole's and Pelham's administrations were notorious for the very audacity of their corruptions. In the reign of Anne Parliamentary corruption was extensive and unblushing. Sir John Trevor, the Speaker, accepted a bribe and did the dirty work of bribing other members. In the reign of George I., during his first Parliament, 271 members held offices, pensions, and sinecures; in the first of George II., 257. In 1776 Lord Chatham accused the ministers of "servility, incapacity, corruption." Macaulay says Lord North's administration was supported by vile and corrupt means, and the King, George III., was not only cognizant of Parliamentary bribery, but advised it and contributed money to it. Although there has been much improvement in the character and purity of the public men, yet as late as 1829 the pension list was above £750,000.
The principle of a representative constitutional republic is right. Much of the evil which afflicts us is the result of a departure from our original system; is an accident rather than essential, and is certainly not to be cured by a monarchical government.
In suggesting some remedies or palliatives for present ills it is not needful to startle by novelties. Truth is generally commonplace, honesty always. A return to justice and right, frugality and economy, as applicable to the body politic and to individual life, a recurrence to fundamental principles, are of prime importance.
As a people we must, if possible, preserve what remains of the Constitution and of the federative system. Sober, honest purpose can reform some abuses. Imperious necessity will compel the North to take effective steps for restoring the violated purity of the Government. If present tendencies are not arrested, liberty will be sacrificed. As the tendency of every government is to excess, a constitution is more or less perfect according as it is full of limitations of authority. The grant and the distribution of public functions should be accompanied with safeguards. Our Federal Constitution cautiously delegates to various public functionaries certain powers of government, defines and limits the powers thus delegated, and reserves to the people of the States their sovereignty over all things not delegated. Our organic law thus seeks to restrain the Government within narrow and prescribed limits, to guard weaker and dissimilar interests against inequality, to interpose efficient checks, to prevent the stronger from oppressing the weaker. Ours is a government under a written compact, and in its purity the best ever devised. The war between the States is much misunderstood. It was a gigantic conflict of political ideas, a controversy, not for or between dynasties, but on the nature and character and power of the Federal Government. Three things were settled by the war:
1. Emancipation and citizenship of the negroes.
2. The surrender of any claim of resort to secession in case of dispute as to powers of the Government, or as a remedy for violated compact.
3. The recognition of such a person as a citizen of the United States, independent of citizenship in a State.
Besides these, nothing else of a political character was settled, and the second was determined only by the stern arbitrament of war. The right of search was, however, similarly adjusted, and the treaty of peace effected at Ghent, on December 24, 1814, contains no allusion to the casus belli. There are few, if any, who do not rejoice at the accomplishment of the first. The mode of emancipation was not such as we would have chosen; but as the problem baffled the wisdom of all the statesmen of the past, we may as well be grateful that African slavery no longer exists to perplex and confound patriots and Christians. The opinions of the framers of the Constitution were reversed on these three subjects by the war. All else remains intact, or can be put in statu quo ante bellum. The Constitution was not abolished. No vital principle of the Federal system, State interposition excepted, was destroyed. "The invasions of the Constitution have resulted from administrative abuses," says Governor Jenkins, "and not from structural changes in the government. This distinction should be kept constantly in view. In a complex government like our own let it never be conceded that a power once usurped is thenceforth a power transferred, nor that a right once suppressed is for that cause a right extinguished, nor that a Constitution a thousand times violated becomes a Constitution abolished." The war did not decide that the powers of the Federal Government were indefinite and unlimited. That is subsequent usurpation. The war did not decide that State lines were to be obliterated, State flags torn down, State governments reduced to municipalities, and the elements of civil authority fused into one conglomerate and centralized mass. Whatever may be the fate or the construction of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, they cannot mean the concentration of all power at Washington and the complete control of the States by the general Government. Our Constitution-makers could not have contemplated political irresponsibility; that the minority should be at the mercy of the majority; and that the residuary mass of undelegated powers was to be swallowed up by the delegated. The fathers felt that no body of men could be safely entrusted with unrestrained authority, and they knew that "all restrictions on authority unsustained by an equal antagonist power must for ever prove wholly inefficient in practice." That a mere party majority can rule as they please, is hateful despotism. A majority, unhindered by any rule but their discretion, is anything but free government; for human nature cannot endure unlimited power, and bodies of men are not more discreet in their tyranny than individual tyrants. The distinction between the granting and the executing, the Constitution-making and the law-making power, is to be reaffirmed. The general Government and the States have separate and distinct objects and peculiar interests—"the States, acting separately, representing and protecting the local and peculiar interests, and acting jointly, through one general government, representing and protecting the interests of the whole; and thus perfecting, by an admirable but simple arrangement, the great principle of representation and responsibility, without which no government can be free or just."—VI. Calhoun, 66.
We need civil service reform in the United States, States, and cities, reducing the number, increasing the competency and responsibility of office-holders, and abolishing the pestiferous maxim that to the victors in a party contest belong of right the offices of the country. We need rigid economy, public and private, civic purity, honest administration. To take a citizen's money, except for the just and economical administration of affairs, is governmental robbery. Economy is not possible in Federal, or State, or municipal governments, with high taxes. Men will steal. The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil. Handling large sums of the people's money is a temptation before which many have yielded. "Economy and accountability are virtues without which free and popular governments cannot long endure."