Politics

FORTY years since a distinguished French author made a voyage, for the purpose of acquainting himself with the manners and customs of the inhabitants of the country, to Utopia, and placed on record some curious observations concerning the patriotism, or what he chose to call the restless vanity, of the Utopians.

“ If I say to a Utopian that the country he lives in is a fine one, ‘ Ay,’ he replies, ‘ there is not its equal in the world.’ If I applaud the freedom which its inhabitants enjoy, he answers, ‘ Freedom is a fine thing, but few nations are worthy to enjoy it.’ If I remark the purity of morals which distinguishes the country, ‘I can imagine,’ says he, ‘ that a stranger, who has witnessed the corruption that prevails in other nations, should be astonished at the difference.”

Since that time there have been a good many changes. Forty years since they were indeed a happy people in Utopia. Perfect laws passed by perfect legislatures, and enforced by perfect courts ; perfect equality, justice, freedom, and peace ; — all these things contributed to make Utopia the happiest country in the world. War was at an end, for there was no army or navy. The poor and the rich had no longer any cause to look upon each other with suspicion or dread, for the simplicity of Utopian institutions prevented those vast inequalities of fortune which existed in other countries. There was no danger, either, of any degeneration, for the intense interest taken by the Utopians in politics always brought into the foremost positions their best men, fully able to avert danger from whatever quarter it threatened. In private life the same serene, unclouded sky. The strict bonds of domestic duty were relaxed, but, far from producing laxity of morals, this had only made way for the free play of affection. Children feared their parents less, but respected and loved them more ; parents in return early taught their children that they demanded of them no cringing subservience, but confidence and good-will. Marriages were always happy, infidelity unknown, and divorce undreamt of. Dishonesty there was none. Directors and bank presidents were faithful to their shareholders, trustees to their responsibilities, lawyers to their clients. In commerce the inhabitants of this Happy Valley were no doubt sagacious; but their keen sense of justice and exquisite power of sympathy fully supplied the place of old-fashioned integrity. The perfect confidence of the Utopians in the permanence of this delightful order of society was expressed in the national proverb, when any danger threatened, that “it would all come out right in the end.” Meanwhile, how different was the case with those countries so unfortunate as to have a different form of government ! War, pestilence, famine, the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, the insolence of office, robbery of the poor by the rich, hatred of the rich by the poor, cruclty, corruption, impurity, fraud, rapine, violence, — these were the portion of the rest of the world. No wonder that wc were a contested people in Utopia forty years ago.

If Dc Tocqueville were travelling here now, he would be struck with the changes which time has produced. Imagine him in New York, fairly passed through the clutches of the public servants of Mr. Thomas Murphy or his successor, and beginning to occupy himself with the observation of the features of society. If he entered the courts he would find justice administered by Barnard and Cardozo ; if he inquired into the character of the Legislature, he would find that for years its members had been bought and sold like sheep in the market. If he asked an explanation of the charges of fraud and robbery filling the air, he would be told that the absorbing occupation of the inhabitants of the principal city of America was the recovery of public funds stolen from them by men whom they had year after year elected by overwhelming majorities to govern them. If he went to Pennsylvania, he would find the Pennsylvania Railroad, stretching, like one of the old crown grants, from ocean to ocean ; buying legislatures, intimidating courts, and gradually establishing a despotism of wealth on pretence of ministering to a public necessity. In the South he would find open plunder the order of the day, and organized violence only suppressed by the intervention of the military arm. In the adjacent islands he would learn that the United States fleet is carrying on war with a nation with which the United States are at peace. In New England the career of General Butler would explain to him the present condition of the New England town. In Illinois and Indiana, he would learn something of the American system of divorce. In all these matters he would find, also, a singular unanimity ; no one would question the facts. Some people would laugh at them ; some would bewail them ; all would admit them. If De Tocqueville were living he would allow that forty years may make great changes even in Utopia.

It is, perhaps, hardly necessary for us to say that we do not intend to weary our readers with Utopian politics. The day for that has gone by. Our ancestors discovered Utopia, lived in it, made themselves happy in it, and finally departed their Utopian life. We have succeeded to the inheritance. What the inheritance will finally prove may be a matter of dispute, but at all events, it is admitted that it is not what it was in their day. We have already seen what it is, in some regards, and we may profitably glance at other aspects of it. In the first place, an auspicious event, which has been often predicted during the past ten years, has at last taken place. The death of the Democratic party is announced ; the most reliable authorities are agreed that the unterrified Democracy is no more. The question which now agitates those who lately called themselves Democrats is whether they will make a Democratic nomination for the next Presidential election and be beaten, or will help to elect some Republican. This alternative shows more plainly than anything else could the present condition of the party. Its “passive future” need not he discussed. It has no future before it. It is dead, having in its last delirium dreamed of Mr. Thomas Scott, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, as a candidate for the Presidency.

On the other hand, what is the position of the Republican party ? The fall elections were generally expected to strengthen the ranks of the Democracy. They have, on the contrary, proved a complete triumph for the Republicans. Their immediate effect seems to be to render certain the renomination and re-election of General Grant. There are, it is true, a good many influential journals and a good many influential men of his own party who are now opposed to him. Neither the Cincinnati Commercial, nor the Chicago Tribune, nor the Springfield Republican, nor the New York Tribune would be displeased if General Grant failed in securing a renomination. There are many reasons, too, why General Grant’s continuance in office would be regretted by other people. As a rule, military men are not the stuff to make good statesmen for an unmilitary and commercial society. For the most part they entertain a professional contempt for law, even when they avow their loyalty to it. Of this peculiarity General Grant’s administration has given at least one signal illustration. Declaring himself firmly opposed to intervention in the affairs of foreign nations, he has for some time past maintained a protectorate of San Domingo, which is in reality an illegal war against Hayti, carried on in the teeth of a distinct provision of the Constitution. Again, General Grant seems ignorant of the elementary principles of economical science to the extreme of believing that the chief source of the wealth of this country is to be found in the mines of California. His system of appointments has been unintelligible. Appointments such as Mr. Murphy’s and Consul-General Butler’s are possible, we see, because commissions have been issued to them ; but how the same man who appointed Mr. Murphy and Consul-General Butler should also have appointed Mr. Fish and Judge Hoar is inexplicable. Besides all this, he has shown a singular want of delicacy, to say the least, in receiving innumerable presents, and indirectly profiting himself out of government contracts. To own stock in a commercial enterprise is one thing, but to own stock in a corporation which is daily making valuable contracts with the departments at Washington is, for the President of the United States, quite another. We do not impugn his honesty. He is no doubt innocent of all share in the management of the “ administration quarry,” but such a scandal ought not to be possible.

Nevertheless, he is a better candidate than any who is likely to come into the field between now and June. His administration has on the whole been, from the popular point of view, a success. He has maintained, if not order, at least stagnation in the South. He has, no matter how, reduced the debt. He has honorably settled the English difficulty ; and has involved the country in no troubles with foreign nations, except with one insignificant state, too weak to resist. Taxes have been reduced, gold has gone down, and if he has not reformed the civil service, he has at least expressed a wish to do so. If he has not yet learned what revenue reform means, it is an open question whether the people themselves have found it out.

If the only question in American politics were the election of Presidents, the Republican party would have before it a prosperous career of indefinite duration. But unfortunately, there are other problems of government which must be solved, and political interests which deeply concern any party desiring the public good, or even its own ascendency. There is a movement — it is yet too early to call it a party — of large numbers in different parts of the country whose aims, desires, and intentions the Republicans will do well to consider earnestly. They are commonly said to be to reform the civil service, to abolish the protective system, to return to specie payments ; the new movement also includes those who desire in the various States to introduce minority representation, to abolish the elective judiciary system, greatly to reduce the number of other elective offices, and to lengthen official tenures to such an extent as to secure responsibility, and to prevent, at least for the present, any extension of the elective franchise to women. To those who are given to retrospective politics, there may seem in this list of principles no common bond of sympathy; no doubt it appears to many wise politicians that the new movement merely represents the local and personal discontent always ready to array itself against the party in power.

But there is a feeling common to all those interested in the reforms we have mentioned, that the course of administration in this country during the last forty years has been in the direction, not of good government, but of anarchy. The method of selecting judicial officers, the tenure of office, representation, the circulating medium, the civil service, the collection of revenue, the limits of the franchise, all questions relating to these subjects belong to the department of administration. They have little to do with the form of government ; they do not touch upon natural rights ; they are questions of administration, pure and simple. The new movement, then, is to effect reforms in the machinery of politics and in administration ; it is to evolve order out of chaos, government out of anarchy.

The political ideal of the Anglo-Saxon is liberty. With Englishmen and Americans the most perfect government is that which governs least; the most perfect state is that in which moral self-control is substitued for the sanctions of government. This is the goal at which we are always aiming. If ideals were the only political realities, the goal would have been reached long ago. But the measures of politics are always carried by a compromise between the real and ideal. The real in political matters consists of the habits, customs, dispositions, and interests of society. The ideal consists in aspirations which must be reconciled with these. For forty years the country has been pursuing an ideal end, and has at last attained it. Meanwhile the realities of the national life have been quite disregarded. It is the aim of the new movement to take these into account.

THE overwhelming defeat of Tammany in the November elections shows what maybe done towards redeeming a city from misgovernment by a violent spasmodic effort on the part of the honest and intelligent classes. We say a spasmodic effort, because such virtuous energy cannot in the nature of things last long. For a few elections the polls will be watched, and fraud prevented, and respectable men elect respectable candidates. But then a reaction will come. People will begin to say that the city government is not so bad as it once was ; that it is as good as need be ; that all this nominating and voting and watching cannot be necessary; that their business is quite as important as a vote which counts neither one way nor the other ; the old indifference and apathy will set in, and then new Tweeds and new Tammanies. The history of San Francisco shows this conclusively. The Committee of Seventy is the counterpart of the Vigilance Committee of that city, but with this difference, that the latter, as it had power of life and death, was much the stronger of the two. The effects of its action ought, therefore, to have been more lasting than those of the New York committee can possibly be. But San Francisco is at present one of the worst governed cities in America,— its rings plundering the treasury, just as if there had never been any Vigilance Committee at all Spasmodic virtue in politics is of course not to be objected to; it may do a great deal of temporary good. But it is not government.

The great problem in the government of a city or any other kind of government is this, How can the interest of the citizens in law and order be made use of in such a way as to produce, through the ordinary action of interest on human motives, good selections of legislators, of judges, of administrators ? Of course it is assumed that there is enough interest to make self-government possible. If there is not, the question soon resolves itself into one of anarchy or usurpation. But if there is, the question becomes, How shall it be so used, under all the circumstances of the case ? The constitution-makers of 1846 thought that the solution of the problem was to be found in frequent elections and universal suffrage ; the result has proved that they were mistaken. Can no other way be found ?

Some interesting articles on this subject have appeared recently in The Nation proposing a novel solution of the difficulty. A modern city, the Nation says, though called a government, is in reality nothing but a corporation. The objects of this corporation are such as lighting the city, paving it, supplying it with water. The people, therefore, who are interested in having good roads and water and gas are those who should control the government of the city. Those who use water should be considered stockholders in a water company (having a power in the control, we suppose, proportioned to the amount used), and SO of gas, roads, bridges, street-cars, and other similar functions. This would insure, if anything could, that taxes should be voted fairly, since the effect of any fraud would come directly upon those whose neglect of their own interests caused it. The administration of justice and the police power would then go to the State, to which they properly belong. This scheme would take away from a mass of ignorant and dishonest men the power of mischief which they now possess, and which arises from their being allowed to vote away property which does not belong to them. It is obvious that there is something wrong in a system which gives any houseless vagabond who can quarter himself upon a city for a few weeks the right to regulate the citizen’s consumption of the necessaries of life. The existing system of city government, with its mimic houses of parliament, its local judiciary, and its toy executive, is a mediaeval tradition, handed down to us from a time when the city, being a political unit, was obliged, by that very fact, to legislate and administer as a sovereign power. In modern communities all sovereign attributes belong to the state. If she delegates any of them, like that of taxation, or the administration of justice, to local bodies, it is only for convenience, not because they have a right to them ; and as soon as it can be shown that the public good is not advanced by this delegation, it ought to cease.

The only objection to this plan that we have seen, is that it is beneath the dignity of a city to become a corporation. In other words, the citizens under the new regime would not feel themselves of so much importance to the world at large as they do now. On the whole, we cannot say that this would be a bad thing.

The same difficulty which has risen to such frightful proportions in New York is already beginning to be felt in every large city in the country. Brooklyn, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Boston, St. Louis, — all have their rings. All these cities contain a large ignorant and criminal class, whose share in the government is every year growing greater and greater. In the city government of Boston, which is probably the least badly governed city in America, the number of men who are fit for their positions is small, and grows less every year. In Cincinnati recent investigations have disclosed a sort of partnership between the police and the criminal classes. In Brooklyn voting-lists have been stolen by sworn officials for the purpose of enabling them to effect a fraud in the election. It is needless, however, to repeat instances. It is the same story from one end of the country to the other. It is not an incurable disease, however, if it is only recognized as a disease, and not as the normal condition of the body politic.

ONE of the interesting facts connected with the Chicago fire is the failure of the plan of hanging General Sheridan for a conspiracy to murder Colonel Grosvenor. As a great deal of excitement has been caused in the West by the case, it may be worth while to state what the reasons for the “military occupation” of Chicago really were. The truth is, that the city government of Chicago, being mainly in the hands of incompetent and dishonest officials, was perfectly useless, nay, worse than useless, and it was evident from the beginning of the conflagration, that, unless some external authority intervened, the city would be given up, not only to fire, but to a general sack by the criminal classes. The government in Chicago was the same kind of government under which New York has till lately suffered, of which Brooklyn is now trying to rid herself. It is well known that in any emergency during the last ten years in New York, the military has been a necessity. It was so in July, 1864 ; it was so last year when the Orange celebration took place ; again in the November elections of this year it was only threats of military interference which rendered unnecessary the actual use of force. One or two significant facts as to the condition of Chicago before the fire have come to light recently. It was found essential to take out of the hands of the officials all supervision of the distribution of funds, for the reason that the funds would otherwise have been stolen ; and such has been the character of the Chicago fire-service that the Fire Commissioners declined for some time to investigate the causes of the fire, on the ground that the investigation “might produce a revolution in the department.” The head of the department was a politician of the camp-follower sort, totally incompetent for the position, who managed the fire-service as a political machine. The question had been, not how to extinguish fires, but how to keep in office. The usual results ensued. When the fire broke out, there was no organization and no discipline. The police was in similar hands. The way the city was protected against fire may be inferred from a single fact. An excellent law had provided that no wooden buildings should be erected within or removed to a certain portion of the city. In 1867 men who had contracted to move some wooden buildings out of the more compact part of the city obtained a modification of this law. The Board of Health remonstrated, but the buildings were moved. It was in this part of Chicago that the fire began. A military organization, then, during the fire was a necessity. But Governor Palmer thinks that the State militia only should have been called in, and resents the interference of General Sheridan as an intrusion on the part of the general government within the sacred domain of State rights. Technically, he is no doubt right. But there was little time for technicalities. A soldier of decision and reputation was required ; General Sheridan possessed both requisites, and every one, including Governor Palmer himself, turned to him in the extremity. The Governor would do better now, instead of engaging in academical disputations, which can have no possible effect either on the past or future, to direct public attention and indignation to the state of society which rendered the interference he complains of necessary. The fact may be worth mentioning, though we do not attach much importance to it, that it appears from the published correspondent. that he thanked General Sheridan at the time for what he now calls his usurpation. This has been denied, but unless very strange principles of interpretation are applied to the letters, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the satrap and his mercenary hordes created in the mind of the lawful ruler at first only sentiments of gratitude and respect.