558
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
sion affirms; and, as far as conscience allows, a man should support that which he thinks host. In one respect, however, all parties agree. They all foster that pestilent spirit which I now condemn. In all of them party spirit rages. Associate men together for a common cause, be it good or bad, and array against them a body resolutely pledged to an opposite interest, and a new passion, quite distinct from the original sentiment which brought them together, a fierce, fiery zeal, consisting chiefly of aversion to those who differ from them, is roused within them into fearful activity. Human nature seems incapable of a stronger, more unrelenting passion. It is hard enough for an individual, when contending all alone for an interest or an opinion, to keep down his pride, willfulness, love of victory, anger, and other personal feelings. But let him join a multitude in the same warfare, and, without singular self-control, he receives into his single breast the vehemence, obstinacy, and vindictiveness of all. The triumph of his party becomes immeasurably dearer to him than the principle, true or false, which was the original ground of division. The conflict becomes a struggle, not for principle, but for power, for victory; and the desperateness, the wickedness, of such struggles, is the great burden of history. In truth, it matters little what men divide about, whether it be a foot of land or precedence in a procession. Let them but begin to fight for it, and self-will, ill-will, the rage for victory, the dread of mortification and defeat, make the trifle as weighty as a matter of life and death. The Greek or Eastern Empire was shaken to its foundation by parties which differed only about the merits of charioteers at the amphitheatre. Party spirit is singularly hostile to moral independence. A man, in proportion as he drinks into it, sees, hears, judges by the senses and understandings of his party. He surrenders the freedom of a man, the right of using and speaking his own mind, and echoes the applauses or maledictions with which the leaders or passionate partisans see fit that the country should ring. On all points parties are to be distrusted; but on no one so much as on the character of opponents. These, if you may trust what you hear, are always men without principle and truth, devoured by selfishness, and thirsting for their own elevation, though on their country's ruin. When I was young, I was accustomed to hear pronounced with abhorrence—almost with execration—the names of men who are now hailed by their former foes as the champions of grand principles, and as worthy of the highest public trusts.
This is a dark indictment, but Dr. Charming was a man who weighed his words. He represents partisan politics as a blighting influence, fatal to self-improvement, hostile to moral independence, and degrading to character. He says that "truth, justice, candor, fair-dealing, sound judgment, self-control, and kind affections, are its natural and perpetual prey." A system the spirit of which makes "truth" its "natural and perpetual prey," it is needless to say, is not favorable to science. Science can not grow, it can not exist, in such an atmosphere.
If it be said that Dr. Channing wrote forty years ago, the reply is that forty years have not mended matters. There is, on the contrary, every evidence that party ends are now pursued in this country with more recklessness of falsehood and more shameless unscrupulousness than ever before. That "all is fair in politics"—a maxim that would be scouted in the cock-pit and on the racecourse—is not a recent rule; but the bad arts of an inveterate partisanship have been gradually perfected. With our political progress principles are progressively eliminated from politics, and first-class men are driven from the field. More and more it is becoming the function of the people merely to ratify at the polls the proceedings of wire-pullers, plotters, intriguing demagogues, caucus bullies, and convention-desperadoes. It is notorious that our politics has passed into the hands of practiced professionals, who outmanœuvre straightforward men, and drive them to the wall. Everything is done by management and under false pretenses. Party excitement is stimulated by stirring up the meanest passions and by plying all the arts of detraction and falsehood. When the campaign opens, the sluices of slander soon run full. Here comes the last "Evening Post," representing the state of things in 1880. In a leader it. says: "As generally conducted, our Presidential campaigns are so volcanic out-
