Politics

THE announcement made by General Butler that he is to be candidate for the governorship of Massachusetts has already turned public attention upon the approaching canvass in this State. To judge from the newspapers, General Butler’s chances in the East, and the Farmers’ movement in the West, are the two most important political matters now before the people. On the face of it, this seems singular. That a movement enlisting hundreds of thousands of voters, which has already swept out of existence, so far as one State is concerned, both the parties which have governed the country for the last generation, and bids fair to destroy them altogether,— that such an uprising as this should, in public interest, be almost outweighed by the vulgar struggles for power of a local demagogue, seems at the first blush to argue a universal want of what might be called a sense of political perspective. But the public are, nevertheless, quite right. The approaching campaign in Massachusetts is as important a campaign as any which has taken place in the country for many a year. It is of consequence, not with reference to the governorship of Massachusetts,— an office which is in itself of small value,— but as an indication of the direction in which the political current is moving.

Writing at this distance in time from the Republican Convention, it is impossible to tell what startling changes in public sentiment may be produced by the agitation already begun. But, speaking of affairs as they exhibit themselves at the opening of the canvass, one of the most striking things to notice is the evident tendency of people in Massachusetts to look on at the contest as if it were one in which they themselves had no immediate right or opportunity to influence. They have, indeed, some reason for doing so. When the professional politician’s study of polities has arrived at such a pitch of perfection that he is enabled to predict future events with an almost astronomical certainty, it is not surprising the mass of the public should listen to his words with a profound conviction that what he says is likely to happen, though they may know, as a matter of legal theory, that it lies entirely with themselves whether the predictions shall come true or not. That Butler was to be governor of the State was foretold nearly a year ago, as part of a series of political changes “ to arrive ”; all of them, except this last of the list, have already actually happened. If any one will look back at the files of the newspapers shortly after Grant’s re-election, he will find that it was announced by all sorts of correspondents entitled to credit for various sorts of inspiration, that certain things would sooner or later take place. Mr. Boutwell would resign his office as Secretary of the Treasury, and the Massachusetts Legislature would proceed shortly thereafter to ballot for a United States senator in place of Mr. Wilson, and their balloting would result in the election of Mr. Boutwell. At the same time, Mr. William. A. Richardson, Mr. Boutwell’s assistant and double, would be appointed Secretary, vice Mr. Boutwell, resigned. In the third place General Butler would enter the field for the governorship of Massachusetts. In the fourth place the regular Republican Convention would nominate him, and the people would elect him. It was also simultaneously announced that these predictions were each and all utterly unwarranted ; that no one had any authority to say what would be done by Mr. Boutwell, General Butler, Mr. Richardson, or General Grant; who would be appointed, or elected, or who would resign. Whether these denials were made for the purpose of giving the predictions more weight, it is, of course, impossible to say ; but that was certainly their effect. The public, instead of troubling itself with doubts as to its duty in the matter, began to take a sort of spectacular interest in the verification of the prophecy. They looked on at the conjuring, on which the curtain soon rose, with amusement; and as the magical transformations began to take place, wonder at the strange skill possessed by the conductors of the entertainment gradually took the place of all other emotions. All the feats have now been performed, except the one last on the bill ; and as the short intermission between the jousts has given the performers an opportunity for a careful examination and preparation of their flies, traps, and wires, the spectators feel that they are pretty sure to see the whole bill successfully performed.

To those in whose eyes politics is not a game, but a matter of deep social importance, there seems to be reason for a darker and more fatalistic view of politics than this. They know the reason why it is possible to make predictions in politics, and what are the hidden forces the knowledge of which enables a few men to gain the apparent control of the very will and mind of the public. Having succeeded, though with great difficulty, in defeating General Butler in his attempt to get possession of the governorship of Massachusetts two years ago, they are better able to appreciate the character of the influences which have since then been gradually affecting an improvement in his fortunes, and sometimes now seem too strong to be successfully resisted. When, two years ago, General Butler announced that he was going to offer himself as candidate, he had not secured the active support of the administration, and of the reformed civil service; he had not, as he has since, become an organic part of the administration machinery itself. How powerful that machinery is we know. The administration, or the Republican party, or the party in possession of the offices, is today the strongest of the many corporations, private and public, which in reality divide among them the power supposed in the eye of the law to belong to the people of the United States. In whatever way we look at the political body which for the past twelve years has been governing the country, we cannot doubt that the machinery is admirably adapted to its object. Like the force which moves the wheels of a huge factory, it makes itself felt in the remotest corner of the structure. The force which seems to be isolated and local comes in reality from the centre of the whole, and is as irresistible at one point as at another. The internal-revenue offices, the customhouses, the district-attorneyships,

The administration is the figure-head. It is this machinery which, in Massachusetts, General Butler directs ; and it is the irresistible force keeping this machinery in motion that renders many people hopeless of successfully opposing him. They begin to look upon him as their fate.

General Butler’s triumph would certainly be evidence that this fatalistic feeling was right. It would show that, no matter how grave objections there are to a man, he can with ease get whatever power he wishes, not surreptitiously but openly, heralding his intentions months beforehand, if he only has behind him the influence of the party in power. of his success— it is difficult to say whether à priori or à posteriori — by proofs drawn from the historic character of the population. It is impossible, the common argument has been, for a corrupt demagogue to rise into power by the votes of the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, by a race of men trained in a rigid and even austere system of morality from their cradles. This argument was very much in vogue at the time of General Butler’s campaign against Mr. Dana in the Fifth Congressional District. “The Fifth Congressional District” (how well we remember the profound dinner-table harangues on the subject!) “is no other than Essex County, old Essex, — the place of all in the world where the most pureblooded Americans were to be found ; the county which contained Salem, Marblehead, and Ipswich, a county rich with memories of devotion to duty, to country, and to religion.” The fact is, however, that neither Essex County nor Massachusetts is any longer what, according to history and tradition, they should be. The population of the whole State has, within the past fifty years, completely changed its character, and no move resembles the population of a generation since than the people who now live in New York resemble in character, traditions, or aspiration the primitive Dutchmen who founded the town two centuries since. Fifty years ago Massachusetts was an agricultural and commercial community, governed by a pure democracy, through the machinery of townmeetings, — this machinery, however, being directed and regulated by powerful external forces lodged in the hands of persons traditionally entitled to respect. The bar, the Church, and a number of old families, which had long enjoyed prescriptive political rights, directed the energies of Massachusetts through the agency of an intelligent, conscientious, and, if not God-fearing, at least deacon-fearing people. To-day almost all trace of this society has passed away. Massachusetts has become a completely modern community. Through a protective tariff, enormous manufacturing industry has been built up, which has completely swamped her agriculture. These manufactories, carried on at first by natives, are now maintained by the labor of large gangs of ignorant foreigners, superintended by a few skilled agents, employed in their turns by capitalists at a distance. This system has of course drawn vast masses of the population from the country into the towns and cities, while at the same time the introduction of railroads, and the substitution of steam for all other kinds of transportation, has given to this movement an increased impetus. The railroad system of the State, too, resembles the factory system so far as it necessitates the concentration of large quantities of wealth in the hands of private individuals, who perform the function of transportation by leaving the management of the roads in the hands of a few experts, and their operation in the hands of many thousand hired laborers, contenting themselves for the most part with drawing, in the form of dividends, the “ transportation tax.” Meanwhile the bar has lost its influence, and almost ceased to be a political school ; the Church has been supplanted by a multitude of rival churches, the competition among which is so fierce that it almost forbids the exercise of the old duty of a supervision of the lives and morals of the people ; the town-meeting has become a meeting of factory hands, readily guided in any direction by scheming politicians; the old families have, in the multiplication of modern interests, found a thousand pursuits quite as attractive to their ambition and pleasing to their tastes as politics. In short, the Massachusetts of to-day (including even Essex County) has become the home of a genuine prolitariat, working for wages for a few rich men, these latter not endowed with any great sense of responsibility either for the welfare of their “ hands,” or for that of the general public. A great deal of surprise was expressed some months ago at the enthusiastic demonstrations of feeling by the citizens of North Easton on the return to the town of Oakes Ames, just censured by Congress for corruption. It seemed to most people unintelligible that any body of men, however ignorant, could have the audacity to flout decency and morality in this way. The explanation, however, was extremely simple. The so-called town of North Easton was nothing but a collection of mills, established by the capital of the Ames family, and worked by men dependent on this family for subsistence.

Looking at it from another point of view, the prevalence of the disposition to regard the events of politics as governed by forces over which we have no control, would indicate that the time was approaching, and, indeed, was not far distant, in which the relations existing between this people and their government were to be fundamentally altered. The government being theoretically in the people’s hands, it is obvious that as soon as people in large numbers cease to believe practically that it is in their hands, and to act upon their want of faith, the theory will be violated by the facts ; the government will no longer be what it purports to be ; in fact, it will be a sham. This is the first step. But the first step is soon taken. This stage does not last long. Sham governments have no great vitality in them. They are inevitably succeeded by real governments, but not the same real government which preceded them. In France, government by universal suffrage became a sham long ago, and has been succeeded by what is practically a government of force. In New York, also, selfgovernment was a sham long ago, it was succeeded by a real government forcibly maintained for several years by fraud ; that again was succeeded by a sort of revolution, the issue of which we have still to see. The election of General Butler would go far to show that the people of Massachusetts have come to the conclusion that they have lost the art of self-government, and that their government must be done for them from outside. Of course, there are a number of people who would be glad to undertake the task.

The result of the election will thus throw a valuable light upon the relation which the theory of government in America bears to the actual facts of its social condition. Ex uno disce omnes is a maxim peculiarly applicable to the social condition of a confederacy of political bodies so like one another as are the United States. We may infer from Massachusetts a great many useful lessons with regard to the current politics and morality in a dozen other States. It has been common for those who, in Massachusetts and elsewhere, have criticised the career of General Butler to demonstrate the impossibility It must not be forgotten, however, that there are considerations which would render the election of General Butler a little less significant of a general moral degradation throughout the State than the Ames reception was significant of the abject condition of North Easton. If General Butler receives the Republican nomination, he will gain the advantage which that nomination always gives in Massachusetts, of seeming to confer upon the nominee a certificate of moral worth. The Massachusetts Republican voter has been for so many years taught to consider the Republican cause identical with the cause of morality, — the Democratic party representing in his mind incarnate sin, — and the morality again has for so many years meant in his mind the adoption of certain legislative or constitutional or military measures which have actually been adopted by the Republican party and throughout opposed by the Democrats, — that he may be unable to discriminate between what is expedient on party grounds and what is expedient on moral grounds. He may be unable to remember that all parties are merely the complex results of the intelligence and characters of the men who compose and lead them. He may not be able to perceive that the adoption of General Butler at this day by the Republican party makes it really his representative. There has been a sad want of candor on these subjects till very lately. How very small has been the number of persons who have dared to denounce openly the character of General Butler’s career ! Even in the contest between himself and Mr. Dana in the Fifth District, where every one knew that the real issue between the parties — the thing which had made a split in the Republican ranks — was the shameful scheme of repudiation advocated by him, how few there were who treated the question as one of popular honesty ! Appeals to voters to preserve the harmony of the party,— not to allow insubordination, but “to march on shoulder to shoulder, one, undivided, triumphant to the end,”— these appeals were common enough. The objection to them was that they did not bring forward the real objection to the candidate, and that, as General Butler had already secured the regular nomination, they would be used with quite as great success on one side as on the other. Indeed, they almost always can.

Will it be possible to defeat General Butler,— to defeat him, that is, if he secures the Republican nomination ? There is only one way in which it can be done, and that is by a union against him of the conservative forces throughout the State. We do not mean the Democrats, though, under ordinary circumstances, they would be ready enough to oppose him ; but a union of the capital, the intelligence, the morality, and what is left of the religion of the State. No wire-pulling or intrigue will be of the slightest avail. The usual political measures have been tried already in the contest for the district attorneyship, and signally failed. At wire-pulling and intrigue General Butler will always beat his enemies. But he can no more successfully struggle against a union of the conservative forces to which we have just referred, than Tweed could in New York. The moment it became evident in New York that Tweed and his confederates were no mere harmless demagogues, but real highwaymen making use of the machinery of the law as a “stand and deliver” to the public, their fate was sealed. They had, to be sure, the good sense to run away with such of their plunder as they could carry off; but had they remained, and made, as they threatened, a struggle for the retention of power, no one who recollects the excited state of public feeling at the time can doubt that some of them would have met a violent end.

We have endeavored here to make it plain that there are sufficient reasons for believing in General Butler’s star ; but it must be confessed that, when we reflect on his past career, his pretensions now reach a height of audacity which, if we were not already familiar with it, would be fairly incredible. Beginning as a lawyer of low reputation, he worked his way up to the position of a strenuous partisan; and then converting his reputation for party fidelity into capital, he placed it at the disposal of the party to which he was the sworn foe. Then enlisting in the war, and distinguishing himself for his administration of a captured city, he made use of this reputation to gain for himself the command of other, military expeditions, in which he succeeded in burlesquing every operation of war. At the return of peace, he got himself elected a member of Congress, and has since then advocated every scheme of plunder which his or any one’s ingenuity has been able to devise ; his latest performance has been the passage of an act securing for these services the increase of his own salary. He is neither a fine orator nor a skilful legislator. None of his political schemes have as yet come to anything of importance ; but with each new failure his power has increased, while his wealth already places him beyond all reach of disaster. He has always displayed the utmost contempt even for the appearance of decency, and has avowed himself almost in one breath a reformer and a cynical sceptic as to any attempts at reform. During all this he has steadily gained in influence, not only with the politicians, but with the people of his district, and now, on the strength of this curious career, offers himself as candidate for the governorship of one of the wealthiest States in the Union.

At present the Massachusetts public look on at General Butler’s attempt with divided feelings. There are a good many people, who ought by this time to have been made more sensible by events which they have witnessed, who are unable to believe that so bad a man as Butler can ever become governor of so good a State as Massachusetts. There are others who regard the candidate as a smart man, and wish him well. There is the class to which we have already referred, who look upon his election as a fate impending over them which they cannot avert, if they would. There are people who habitually take little interest in politics, and who regard the candidate with curiosity rather than any stronger feeling. There are a number of deluded persons, chiefly prohibitionists, labor-reformers, suffrage-reformers, who think that if General Butler would pledge himself to a furtherance of their designs, his fitness for the governorship in other respects would be a matter of little consequence. There is a number of elderly politicians who thoroughly understand General Butler, and will do their utmost to defeat him ; there are a number of young politicians, hangers-on either of General Butler or of the administration, who will go through thick and thin to secure him any office he may wish. In this confusion there is as yet no line drawn between what may be called the conservative party and the party of disorder. There must be such a line, if General Butler is to be defeated. Sooner or later it must come to this : that those who are opposed to the introduction of the confusion and anarchy that inevitably come of licensed corruption must range themselves under some leader and let the people of the State know that, if they any longer desire to see the rights of property respected, or a semblance of decency maintained in the government of a State once so confident of the strength of its title to esteem as Massachusetts, they must declare themselves against General Butler ; and that if they do not, they lay themselves open to the suspicion of being enemies of everything held by mankind as sacred, and citizens of a State in which no man can consider his person or his possessions safe. It is ridiculous to talk of Massachusetts as if she was exempt from the ordinary evils which afflict States. She has hitherto been more fortunate than many of her rivals in having kept her judiciary pure at a time when theirs was attacked by that terrible dry-rot the final effect of which we have witnessed in New York ; but even an appointed judiciary may lose its virtue in time. We have seen how much it may be degraded (even without any actual corruption) in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States, — a court which was once the most powerful tribunal in the world, and has now become timid and time-serving simply through a series of appointments dictated by political rather that judicial considerations. There has not been wanting “ politics ” either in some of the later judicial appointments in Massachusetts. What Butler’s judicial appointments would be it is not difficult to imagine. With a constantly deteriorating and easily managed legislature, a threatened judiciary, the support of the administration, and a large and ignorant wagesearning population as the ultimate repository of political power, it certainly would be easy for the executive to make himself master of the situation, and make absolutely sure of his next move, whatever it might be.