PARTY ALLEGIANCE.

BY W. W. CATLIN.

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One of the previous speakers referred rather sarcastically to the Mugwumps and Civil-Service Reformers as theorists," and seemed to deem that statement an effective argument against their views, but I beg to remind him, and all who think as he does, that "theories" frequently develop into undisputed facts.

When Rousseau's book, "The Social Compact," was first issued the French nobility dismissed it as a “mere theory ;” “· and yet," says Carlyle, "the hides of the French nobility served to bind the second edition of that work."

In the play of "Joshua Whitcomb" there is a character named Cy Prime, an old dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, who insists upon voting for General Jackson long after the latter's death, upon the ground that "General Jackson dead is a good deal better than any other man living." Well, I don't agree with Cy in regard to that matter, though I find that the same feeling still exists in the minds of many people regarding one or another Political Party. I look upon a Political Party as simply a means to an end, and because I find myself in sympathy with a given Party to-day I do not by any means intend that fact as a notice that I have entered into a covenant of marriage with said Party which shall continue “as long as we both shall live," though that construction is frequently put upon it.

I believe that personal independence is vastly more essential to the development of wise legislation than subserviency to Party dictation ever can be. A Political Party is formed to carry out a policy of government, and its organization is effected for the purpose of setting forth its principles and urging men to aid in establishing them by voting for its candidates. But as parties are simply men in the aggregate, and as men change more or less as they grow in years and experience, it becomes necessary to hold a periodical convention for the purpose of deciding whether or not any changes are necessary in the Party's declaration of principles, and if so to make the alterations in such a way as best to meet the changes in public sentiment which have occurred since the last election. Then the Party is ready for a new campaign. It may be that I have voted with that Party in the past, but for reasons satisfactory to me (either a change in the Party

platform, or in my own views as to the most important issues before the people now) I decide to vote with the opposing Party.

What is the result-to me? You all know, or you will if you try it. The Party to which I formerly "belonged " (I notice that partisans usually speak of a voter in a Party as "belonging" to the Party, as though he had sold himself, body and soul, to it) the Party to which I formerly "belonged," I say, will proceed to expose to the world my mental decrepitude and moral depravity until I begin to feel like apologizing to mankind for living, while the Party with which I at present sympathize will praise my clear vision and commend my political independence. Now it occurs to me that if allegiance to Party is to be commended, and if it is a great wrong for a man to leave the Republican Party and vote with the Democratic Party it is just as great "treason." as it is sometimes called, for a Democrat to leave that Party and vote with the Republicans; and yet both parties use all possible efforts to win converts from each other. There must be "an Ethiopian in the hedge" here somewhere! Party desertion, as it is called, if bad at all, is equally wrong in the adherents of all parties; and if it is right to denounce a man for leaving one Party and voting with another, it is certainly shameless hypocricy for the Party uttering the condemnation to be at the same time using its utmost efforts to entice to its support voters of other parties. And how utterly illogical it all is, too! If a man once a Republican is always a Republican, and Democrats ditto, what is the use of a convention and a long campaign, costing millions of dollars, preeeding each election? The very influences used to keep the voters of one Party solid in its interest would also tend to hold the voters of other parties as unanimous in support of theirs.

It might save a great deal of worry and expense, I will admit, but I think the result would be that every man would vote the ticket headed by the name of the Party whose brand he wore, and would teach his children to do likewise; and it would soon become a question of whether more Democrats or Republicans became voters than died, and would eventually reduce itself to a question of the propagating qualities of the members of the two great parties.

In fact, however, all the money is spent, all the agitation carried on, and all the abuse on the one hand and flattery on the other, made use of, to attract the support of the unanchored voters-those who are influenced by the issues of the time rather than the mandates of Party leaders.

I sincerely believe that it would be just as logical for me to take the Burlington road every time I want to travel, simply because I like the road and its management, and utterly regardless of the destination I want to reach, as for me to proclaim Allegiance to one Political Party without regard to its relations to issues that now exist or may soon arise.

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Solomon said: There be three things which are too wonderful for me; yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid;" but if he were alive now, and familiar with our Party politics, I feel sure that his list of wonderful things would be revised and enlarged; and I have sometimes thought Job

had some of our Party manipulators in mind when he said to his alleged friends and comforters, “No doubt ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you."

I believe in Allegiance to truth rather than to Party, or even Country, and the ability to discern truth is more frequently a development than an inherited faculty. I maintain that whatever mental capacity I possess is to be used for my guidance, and is not to be subordinated to the opinion of some one else at the behest of some Party leader with whose views I may have no sympathy whatever. I do not say that I am always right and my opponents wrong, but simply that I believe I am right, and so believing will vote as I think. It seems to me that the fundamental idea in our Government is that each man should maintain his personal independence-and especially his freedom of thought—at all hazards, and in so doing learn to recognize not only the right but the duty of every other man to do likewise.

Parties rise and fall, develop and decay, as the result of the forces which call for, and then dismiss them, but truth never changes. If a man is true to himself he is never false to Party, Country, or God, and, in my judgment, when we urge upon people the imperative necessity of Allegiance to Party we are very likely to teach them to subordinate all else thereto.

I believe in advising men to base their political opinions solely upon principles, and they will then have little trouble in finding their places in the ranks of the Party whose course is toward the goal they want to reach, though it does not follow that they will always vote with the same Party. For instance, as a free trader I might have thought my chances as good in the Republican Party, five years ago, as in any other, but last year I would have had about as much chance there as a snowball in the infernal regions.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes says, "the great end in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving;" and I think Emerson pointed the way toward real progress and true consistency when he said, "I will utter what I believe to-day, even though it contradicts all I said yesterday."

LAND TAXATION;

AS PROPOSED BY HENRY GEORGE.

BY EDW. O. BROWN.

I shall not follow the example of several of the speakers at former meetings of this Club by saying that it is contrary to my inclination that I am one of its appointed speakers. Some natural embarrassment in addressing what I fear will be so critical an audience, of course I have, but I will frankly say that since the subject is that which it is, I feel both honored and gratified in being asked to open the discussion. I am glad to be able to set before you things which I believe with all the strength of religious conviction are of the highest importance and interest to us all.

The subject, as announced, is "Land Taxation as proposed by Henry George," and this, I take it, means exactly what would be meant had it been announced as the "Single Tax." This expression-" the Single Tax ❞— while on the one hand it is a convenient and concise name for the proposed reform, is in another sense almost a misnomer.

For of taxation upon the present lines, taxation direct or indirect, we who are believers in the new political economy, would have absolutely nothing. Of taxation which takes away from men against their will that which in any true sense is their own, that which they have made, that which is the product of their industry and energy, their thought and labor applied to natural opportunities to which they have had access; or of taxation which imposes obstacles and burdens upon the natural and praiseworthy desire of men to exchange with each other these products of their own labor; of tariffs and income taxes, and internal revenue taxes and poll taxes, et id omne genus—I, for my own part, have no reform to suggest, except that reform implied in Hamlet's advice to the players Oh, reform them altogether."

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When a few weeks ago the subject of speculation was discussed here, I thought that if only we recognized what was properly the subject of individual property, what alone morally could be, and what alone therefore legally ought to be property, the basis for a right conclusion upon that sub

ject could easily enough be reached. I believe so, too, of this subject of taxation. I doubt philosophically, the right of any government to take for the use of the community, or for any other purpose, from individual men, against their will, that which properly belongs to those men as individuals. On the other hand, there are things which the community, as the community, collectively owns.

These things the community, by its organized expression in government, has a right to dispose of for its own proper purposes. It is at the best, but force and brute strength which makes a man give up, for purposes of which he may entirely disapprove, at the will of a ruler, of a majority, or of any power outside of himself, a portion of that value which his own individual effort has created. No legal fiction of a social compact can evade that conclusion. It is from this fact, it seems to me, that there springs that impatience of taxation which has everywhere been the origin of liberty. It is from this fact that even in the freest of governments there exist those evasions and subterfuges with which men otherwise honorable, will always greet the tax collector. It is from this fact that, among any people, whatever may be their political theories, freedom of trade and freedom of speculation in the face of laws made to restrict them, are never accounted crimes.

And even if we admit that such taxation as I have spoken of is within the rightful function of government; even if we admit that it is necessary, it will remain an evil still. That the results of taxation of industry are mischievous and deleterious to its development, all history shows. The hopeless condition of the French people before the Revolution, the abject misery of the Egyptian peasant of to-day, was and is but the result of taxation. You may say they were caused by the overwhelming amount of the taxation; but that which in one degree produces the utter ruin of industry, must in a lesser degree even discourage and injure it. In the seventeenth century machinery used in manufacturing (crude enough undoubtedly it was), was in the south of England subjected to local taxation, in the north it was exempt. The result to-day is the almost purely agricultural character of the south of England, and those magnificent centers of manufacturing industry like Birmingham and Manchester in the north. So says Professor Thorold Rogers, the greatest of English authorities upon such subjects. I am told that in our own country exemption of machinery used in manufacturing from local taxation in Philadelphia, has made it one of the great manufacturing centers of the world, and that to-day, using this as an argument, the mayor of Minneapolis is urging upon the common council the advantages of such exemption there.

And so I say that a tax upon that which is properly a man's property, on that which he produces, a fine, therefore, on his industry and energy and thrift, cannot be anything but an evil. Even if it be a necessary evil, in order that greater ones, springing from disorder and anarchy, may not exist, it will be an evil still.

But what is the proper subject of individual property? What is it that a man can own, as his own, in his individual right? One of the greatest of English thinkers, two hundred years ago, stated the basis of