NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CCCXXXV.

OCTOBER, 1884.

THE MORAL CHARACTER IN POLITICS.

TO ONE who notes the signs of the times, it is clear that very significant changes are taking place in the political affiliations of the American people. Party ties have become weak, and with multitudes have ceased to control. There are very many voters, wise and upright men, who have not yet determined for whom they shall vote at the coming election for President; and great numbers on both sides who have heretofore steadily sided with the one party will now vote with the other. Rarely, if ever before, have so many changes in party attachments or so little interest in a party contest been manifested at this stage of a Presidential canvass.

The reason for this is not that the American people have lost their moral earnestness, but because they possess this to so great a degree. The American people cannot be interested in merely playing at politics; they cannot become excited over make-believes. They demand a real issue, which the Republican and the Democratic parties no longer offer. The lines which have separated these two great parties have become obliterated; their two platforms are essentially the same. There is no longer any great political principle which characteristically dis

tinguishes either from the other, hence we notice that the platform speakers in the present canvass, when they leave the candidates and argue on party grounds for either side, draw their arguments from what the party has been, rather than from what it is.

There are and really can be but two political parties anywhere, for there is but one political problem; and to this only two answers are possible, into which the real issues of all political parties, whatever their name or apparent number, must be resolved. The great political problem-the hinge of all social movements in all time-is, how to marry law and liberty together; in other words, how shall man be governed and yet be free? Government and freedom-liberty and law - are both necessary. If government be wanting, liberty becomes license; if freedom fail, law leads to despotism. But how shall the claims of each be settled? In the perfect state, to which tend all the unformed and unconscious instincts of men, perfect law and perfect liberty will have complete accord; and in the imperfect state, so far as it has any living growth, there will be a constant struggle toward this condition- a feeling after, if haply it might find it, though in the darkness. To the question, how it can be found, there can be, as there have been, only two replies. We can on the one hand set the liberty first, and bring the law to meet its claims; or, on the other, we can put the law in the foreground, and let the liberty follow as the law may lead. Between these two there is a living issue which can rouse men, and which has actually given strength to all political struggles the world over.

It is quite easy to see that this has been in former times the exact issue between the Democratic and the Republican parties. I do not mean that it has been definitely propounded or even consciously formulated as such (the real motives in great political actions often reach below the consciousness of the actors, and are often most powerful when least perceived), but as one studies the history of these two parties, it can be clearly seen that this issue gives the characteristic marks to both. The Democratic party has taken its ground upon liberty; it has made freedom its primary care. Government with it has had the secondary place, and the consent of the governed the first. From the outset this party has held everything subserv ient to its own independent will. It has sought only what it

chose, demanding a self-government, with a clear emphasis of the self. The attempted secession of the Southern States, which claimed their right to set up for themselves because they chose to have it thus, was the consistent application of the Democratic principle.

The position of the Republican party has been the exact converse; its eye has been preeminently on the law. While the Democratic party has sought for a liberty which should determine their law, the Republican party has looked for a law which should maintain their liberty. It has affirmed a law which ought to be obeyed, and which could rightfully command the choices of its subjects, whether originally conformable to those choices or not. It is sound Democratic doctrine, that whatever the people will is right, and may be enacted as law. The counter principle, on which the Republican party first took its stand, maintains that what is right the people ought to will, and that nothing is lawful or should be chosen unless it has an authority with which men's reason and choice have nothing other to do than to discover and obey. The attitude of the Republican party toward the Southern secession, compelling obedience to lawful authority, though the choices of eight millions of people refused to obey, exactly illustrates its original spirit.

I do not need to exemplify at length this difference between these two parties, though nothing would be easier; nor do I wish now to consider at all which of these conflicting claims has the better ground. The only point I now note is that here is a real and living issue, worthy of the contests which have raged around it, and deserving still to be contended for, only that it is no longer set forth. The Republican party, not formally, not openly,-perhaps still unconscious of any change, -but obviously to any observing eye, has abandoned its early ground. It makes no more any profession of contending for what is right simply because it is right; it no longer affirms any universal rights of man, nor any supreme law of God, nor any claim which rests upon nations, and which all nations in universal brotherhood should obey. In its late Chicago convention, its platform was built with a single eye to what the choices of the people are, without regard to what they should be. The high ground of its early history, when it set up a standard which the majority were sure to reject, but to which they were never

theless uncompromisingly summoned, and which at length compelled the choices which were at first refused, has been entirely relinquished. Hence the great issue between the two parties no longer exists. They are contending for no principle. Their only struggle is to obtain possession of the patronage and the power of the government. This explains the lack of enthusiasm in the contest, the shifting of so many from one side to the other of hitherto dividing party lines, and the uncertainty of so many at the present time as to how they shall vote. It explains also the demand, more and more loudly expressed, for a party which shall have some moral convictions, and the courage to express them.

For, whatever may be said about the economic questions entering into state policy, and however prominently, or even exclusively, these may stand out in many minds, the moral relations of the state are, nevertheless, paramount. Economic questions are wisely determined only by ethical considerations. Questions of the tariff, taxation, trade, currency, immigration, the rights of labor and of capital, all root themselves in the deeper question of man's organic relationship with his fellowman; and can only be wisely settled-settled peacefully and permanently on the great principle that men and nations are all linked together, that we are all fellow-members, one of another, so that if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, and if one member be honored, all the members rejoice together. The state, if not a moral person, represents the highest moral will, and any policy of the state is advantageous in the line of what may be called material profit and loss, only as it expresses this moral will; in other words, only as it is determined on the broadest principles of rectitude.

Hence, the first quality of statesmanship is moral. The statesman needs first of all that he himself be upright. A good will, clear and firm, is his best endowment. He needs, of course, high gifts of intellect― understanding of his times, like the men of Issachar, that he may know what the people ought to do; and we may perhaps conceive of a man so well endowed with intellect, so far-sighted, that he could see the wisdom for a government of a moral attitude which he has never taken for himself; as Goethe, great genius that he was, discerned and accurately described experiences of which he was never conscious; but such geniuses are very rare, and even when found we are