With all the prestige of possession, and of being the acknowledged representative of the principle which had carried it into power, the result of the late elections began to be feared by the party, because its leaders knew they had driven it from its birthright, and led it after strange gods; and, had the opposing party been actuated by true progressive principles of justice, no man, however popular in himself, could have saved it from destruction.
Conscious of having departed from the principles that gave it power, the Republican party is even now seeking every means within its grasp to fortify itself behind measures looking solely to success in ’72; but it is prophesied that ere that time there will have sprung into existence another party that will not be the mere professed representative of freedom and equal rights to all, but the actual, living, moving, irresistible incarnation of those principles.
The lines of policy pursued by party leaders, and the channels of corruption opened by the executive officers of the government, have produced a result so wide-spread in its influence and ramifications that, instead of their being under the control of the government, they exert a vast if not controlling power over all its actions; it is not necessary to go beyond its own records to establish this fact; every newspaper in the country teems with evidence in point; the clergy have deemed the situation dangerous enough to hurl the anathemas of the Church against it; the dramatist and the artist, the poet and the philosopher, have each dealt his blow, while the “toiling millions” everywhere cry for reform.
So general and earnest has the demand for reform become that something must be done; the gathering masses of corruption all over the body will soon have ripened to bursting; and who can tell how much the body itself has become involved. May it not be feared that it does not possess sufficient recuperative purity and strength to stand the shock? Could the enlightened mental, moral and spiritual elements of the country which are possessed by those who stand in the front ranks of the advancing column of progress be combined into organized action, they might be able to arrest the abnormal growth of corruption, and, by strengthening and stimulating the sound members of the body to co-operative action, restore the whole system to its normal condition.
The machinery of the government has become so complex and unwieldy—so full of departmental and petty offices—that it is utterly beyond the power of one man, though he be “a great and mighty President,” to understand and control it.
The tendencies of the government being dangerous to the liberties of the people, their demand for reform is earnest, and must be heeded. But where will reformation begin? To whom must we look for relief? If we go to Congress with the Constitution in our hands, and demand such legislation as would give practical efficiency to the preamble and charter of freedom, they may possibly pay sufficient attention to the subject to pass a joint resolution setting forth that, while certain inalienable rights seem to be guaranteed to all, still Congress must be the dispensing power and judge of its application; and that it has decided that the negro shall be the first on the list—next, perhaps, the Indian may come in—next the Chinaman, and all the ends of the earth—except woman. Yes, go to Congress for relief from onerous taxes, wrung from the blood and bones of the laboring poor to fill the coffers of government vampires, and they will answer you by passing some new Revenue Act, in whose cunningly prepared articles will be found traps set for the people’s money, which the trained bands of political party secretly manage on joint account for themselves and their party leaders; it will answer you by granting new subsidies to corporations already grown rich from the fruits of the labor of the people; by granting to powerful monopolies still further privileges increasing their power through bribery and corruption to make subordinate the welfare of the country to their own selfish purposes, and by favoring all schemes for the centralization of power. Such being the answers to your demands, there is still a tribunal to which you can appeal, which in all time past has heard and answered the demands of the age.
In the system of special and class legislation causes of corruption and the downfall of governments may always be found; it is the bane of the nations, whence flows that subtle, entrancing poison that permeates all the arteries and veins of a country—so quietly and alluringly to the people, that, before its effects are suspected, the vital principle of the government is destroyed, and the lifeless form finally falls to rise no more forever; or, if the spiritless form be still upheld by the usurper, it is only retained as “a cheat and a delusion” to shield the person of the tyrant who has enslaved his victims in the name and under the guise of liberty.
TENDENCIES AND PROPHECIES OF THE PRESENT AGE.
[Revised from the American Workman of Oct. 16, 1870.]