Kitabı oku: «Belford's Magazine, Vol. II, No. 3, February 1889», sayfa 5

A SHOT ON THE MOUNTAIN

 
An eagle drifting to the skies
To gild her wing in sunset dies,
To float into the golden,
To swing and sway in broad-winged might,
To toss and heel in free-born right,
High o'er the gray crags olden.
 
 
A dark bird reaching on aloft,
Till far adown her rugged croft
Lies limned in misty tracing —
Till, riding on in easy pride,
Her cloud-wet wings are ruby pied,
Are meshed in amber lacing.
 
 
An eagle dropping to her cave
On dizzy wing through riven air,
A bolt from heaven slanted;
A startled mother, arrow-winged,
A mountain copestone, vapor-ringed,
An eyry danger-haunted.
 
 
An eagle slanting from the skies
To stain her breast in crimson dyes
Beneath the gilt and golden;
A shred of smoke – the gray lead's might —
A folded wing – the dead bird's right —
Abreast the gray crags olden.
 
 
The blush light fades along the west,
The night mist rolls to crag, to crest,
To cowl the ghostly mountain;
Black shadows hush the eyry's calls;
Below, a broad brown pinion falls —
The last light from the fountain.
 

J. W. Rumple.

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT

PURIFYING THE POLLS BY LAW

The edifying efforts made by Congress to throw guards about the ballot would be encouraging were they based on a little knowledge of the fact, and the reason for it. As it is, the be-it-enacted agreed on is little better than a solemn protest. Our learned law-makers would enjoy greater progress if they would remember that we have had for a century all the law necessary to punish such corruption, and that the trouble lies in our inability to enforce its provisions.

What is really wanted is a tribunal to try and enforce the stringent enactments already in existence. This does not now exist. When a candidate for Congress corruptly purchases enough votes to secure his return to either House, he knows that such Chamber, being the judge of such applicant's qualifications, forms a court without a judge to give the law or an impartial jury to render a verdict. The Committee on Elections in either House is made up of the Democratic or Republican party, and so the jury is packed in advance.

This is not, however, the only evil feature in the business. There is probably no organized body so ill-fitted for adjudication upon any subject as Congress. Returned to place by parties, the members are necessarily partisans. Their tenure of office is so brief that they have no time in which to learn their legitimate duties through experience, and these duties are so numerous, to say nothing of being encroached upon by services entirely foreign to their positions, that they have no opportunities for study. The consideration then of any subject from a judicial point of view is simply impossible. It is "touch and go" with them, and the touch is feeble, and the go hurried. It seems that a case of purely judicial sort has no place in Congress; and yet we have seen an instance – for example, in the New Idria contention – where the courts had been exhausted, from an Alcalde to the Supreme Court of the United States, and yet the complainant, worsted in every one of these tribunals, came through the lobby into Congress, and for over ten years kept that body in a tumult. Of course this was kept alive by the corrupt use of stock to the extent of ten millions, based on the credit of a company that would be such when Congress gave its illegal approval. This fact alone proves the dangerous and uncertain character of a legislative body that takes on judicial functions.

When a contested election goes before the standing committee called into existence as a court, it passes into a secret committee-room, where the so-called evidence, put on paper, is supposed to be considered. What would be said of a jury impanelled avowedly from the party of one side, and then made into a court to sit and deliberate with closed doors against the public?

It is true that the finding is shaped into a report and goes before the House. But no member of that body, especially of the House of Representatives, has either time or opportunity to read the evidence, or even to listen to the arguments made by contestants upon the floor. That tribunal has lost all power in its loss of public confidence. It not only brings the law into contempt, but itself into such disrepute that its findings are worthless. This is the condition of Congress in public opinion. So far as contested elections are concerned, it is regarded with contempt. To make matters worse, and pay a premium on vice, the losing party is allowed the same mileage and pay given his successful competitors.

If all contests were turned over to the United States courts, to be tried in the locality where the wrong complained of was done and the witnesses live, there would be few contested elections, and some chance given to punish bribery and other corruption.

Again, the prohibition against the subscription or payment of money has exceptions that open wide the doors to corruption. To say that money may be used for any purpose is to leave the evil precisely where the law-makers found it. It were better to have the government furnish the tickets, as the government supplies the ballot-boxes, rents the polling-places, and pays the officials for their services. The ballot is as much a necessity to the machinery of election as the boxes; and because it would be difficult and troublesome to supply them is far from saying that it is impossible.

Then, to punish both bribe-giver and bribe-taker in the same way is to throw a guard about the iniquitous transaction. The bribe-taker should go acquit. Of course this would be in a measure opening a door to blackmailers, and make the candidacy extremely dangerous. Such it ought to be. The sooner we put a check on the shameless solicitations for office the better it will be for the Republic. Let the offices, as of old, in the purer days of the fathers, seek the man – and not the man, as now, the offices. If the effect of this would be to drive timid, decent men from office, it would not be worse than the present system. A candidate for the House of Representatives must not only pay his two years' salary in advance to "heelers," as they are called, but must get drunk in every saloon in his district. We cannot make matters worse, and there is a chance in a change for an improvement.

True reform to be effectual must be radical. A compromise with evil is a surrender to hell. To cut a poisoned shrub even to the ground relieves the eye for a time, but the root is made more vigorous by the trimming. The constitutional governments of Europe have rid themselves of bribery and other corruption by digging out the roots. This is the only course open to us. When members of the House can bribe their way to place, when Senate chairs are sold in open court, when it calls for only two millions to purchase the Presidency, and all done by men of high social position, we have reached the lowest level, and our great Republic is a mere sham and a delusion. We are not menaced with the loss of liberty and guaranteed rights. They are gone.

THE MUGWUMP ELEMENT

The purchase of the Presidency in open market, now generally recognized, is less disheartening than the apathetic indifference in which such corruption is regarded by the people. In all communities men may be found to buy, and men to sell, the sacred privilege upon which our great Republic rests; but it is rare – so rare that this experience is almost without precedent – that good citizens, knowing the nature of their free institutions, are willing to have them destroyed without an effort in behalf of their preservation.

To get at not only the fact but the reason of it we must remember that politics to the average citizen has all the fanaticism of religion, and all the fascination of gambling. We have the country divided in two hostile camps, and in these organizations themselves we have lost the objects for which they were organized. This is the tendency of poor human nature the world over. It is probably more pronounced in religion than in any other form. A man will not only fight to the bitter end, but die as a martyr, for a sect whose dogmas he has never read, or, if read, fails to comprehend. Politics is our popular religion. Taking the great mass of our citizens, we are pained to write that it is about our only religion.

We say that we have two hostile camps, in both of which the objects for which they were organized have been entirely lost. The ordinary Republican can give no reason for being such save that he is not a Democrat, and the Democrat has the same reason, if it may be called such. Each will avow, without hesitation, that the other camp is made up of knaves and fools. The folly of thus designating over half our entire voting population does not strike the partisan.

Parties, however, are not called into existence and held together through intellectual processes. They are founded on feeling. For years and years the brightest minds and purest characters preached, with burning eloquence, upon the wrongs of negro slavery, and got ugly epithets and foul missiles in return, if indeed they were listened to at all. At a moment of wild frenzy an armed mob at Charleston shot down our flag. In an instant the entire people of the North rose to arms, and a frightful war was inaugurated. The flag sentiment outweighed the Abolition arguments.

It is not our purpose to give the philosophical view of that contest. We use it only, so far, in illustration. The sectional feeling that brought on that armed contest continues in another direction, and divides the two great parties. It is so intense that each is willing to see the republic under which we live utterly destroyed, so that one may be conquered or the other defeated.

We are all agreed that the ballot is the foundation-stone of our entire political structure. On this was built the form of government given us by the fathers, and was the grand result of all the blood and treasure, of life and property, so patriotically poured out in the Revolution that made us independent. Yet this ballot is openly assailed, its processes corrupted with money, and its usefulness entirely destroyed, without arousing the indignation of an outraged public. Men of wealth, of high social position, members of churches, and leaders in what are called the better classes, subscribe and pay the money knowingly that is to be used in the purchase of "floaters in blocks of five" or more, while voters, well-to-do farmers, and so-called honest laborers are organized willingly into blocks and shamelessly sell that upon which they and their children depend for life, liberty, and a right to a recompense for toil. When the result is announced bonfires are burned, and loud shouts go up amid the roar of artillery, expressive of the joy felt in such a triumph.

These men of means – it makes no odds how the means are accumulated – are not aware that in this they are cutting away the foundations under their feet, and that, too, with ropes about their necks. Their only security, not only to the enjoyment of their property but to their lives, lies in the very government they are so eager to destroy. We have called attention to the fact that humanity suffers more from an inequality of property than from an inequality of political rights. These last are rapidly getting to be recognized and secured in constitutions throughout the civilized world. Kings and emperors have come to be mere figure-heads above constitutions, and the political dignity of the poor man is generally acknowledged. But the poor man remains, and the castle yet rears its lofty front above the hovels of the suffering laborers. Humanity is yet divided between the many who produce all and enjoy nothing, and the few who produce nothing and enjoy all. This is the inequality of property, and governments yet hold the sufferers to their hard condition. It is called "law and order," as sacred in the eyes of the Church as it is potent in courts of justice.

There is no government so poorly fitted to the execution of the hard task of holding labor down as this of the United States. In Europe through the dreary ages the masses have been born and bred to their wretched condition. With us, on the contrary, there has been a great expenditure of toil and treasure to teach labor its rights. In Europe great armies are organized and kept upon a war footing for police duty. We have no such conservative force upon which to rely in our hour of peril, and yet so far our government has held sway through our habitual respect for that which we created. These wealthy corruptors are rapidly destroying this respect. They are teaching the people that their ballots are merchantable products, and their ballot-box a rotten affair.

Violence follows fraud as surely as night follows day, or a thunderstorm a poisoned atmosphere. The day is not distant when these millionaires will be hunting holes in which to hide from the very mobs they are now so assiduously calling into existence. God in his divine mercy forgives us our sins when we are repentant, but the law that governs our being – called nature – knows no forgiveness. The wound given the sapling by the woodman's axe is barked over, but that cut, slight as it seems, remains, and may hasten decay a hundred years after. The wrong done the body politic may fester unseen, but it festers on all the same.

Fortunately for the people there is yet a feature in the situation that gives us hope. We are blessed with no inconsiderable body of men of sufficient sense and conscience to rise above party control and vote in support of good measures and honest, capable men. These are not men dominated by one idea, and devoted to some one measure that is to remedy all our political ills. These are "cranks," so called, because they believe that human nature is constructed like machinery – something like a coffee-mill that has a crank that, if turned and turned vigorously, will put the entire machine in good running order. To some this is temperance, to others the tariff, to a third our common-school system: and so they give their lives to a vociferous demand for help to turn the one peculiar crank.

We refer, not to such as these, but the thoughtful, patriotic few who rise above party obligations to a consideration of their country's good. These men are not organized into a party, – unless the fact of two men thinking and feeling alike make a party, – and, as compared to the Republican and Democratic camp-followers, are few in number. But, in the evenly divided condition of the two organizations, these men hold the balance of power, and are dreaded in consequence. Had it not been for the money used by Republicans, and the treachery practised by a few leading Democrats, these independents would have given New York to the Democracy, and Grover Cleveland would be President for the next four years.

These men are derided, scoffed at, and held in high disdain by the partisans of both parties. They are called Mugwumps; and when this strange epithet is hurled at them the assailant seems to feel relieved. This is no new thing. Among the traditions of the Church is one to the effect that as the devil talks he spits fire. All reformers are treated to this. It is well remembered that in the troublous times of '61 the Mugwumps, then denounced as Abolitionists, came to the front and carried the government through its dark hour of peril to a triumphant close. They were brave, brainy, patriotic men, not disturbed by the abuse heaped upon them.

We are comforted to observe the power of these few men as proved in the debate on the civil-service law of the House when an appropriation was called for to sustain the Commission. The debate proved what we all know – that probably not a member of the House but regards the reform in utter loathing and wrath. And yet, when the vote was taken, but a small minority were willing to put themselves on record in opposition. The same clear appreciation of the evil consequences attending this corruption of the ballot, and the conscience that makes itself felt as that of the people, are forcing a reform in that direction. The time is not distant when the now much-reviled Mugwumps will be regarded, as are the Abolitionists, as the true patriots of the day. God would have forgiven Sodom and Gomorrah could five righteous men have been found in either city: this not out of regard for the five, but from the evidence afforded that if that number existed, these wicked places could not be altogether lost.

OUR HOUSE OF LORDS

The dignity of this unnecessary and disagreeable body was somewhat disturbed by a Senator in a wild state of intoxication, who from his place in the Chamber assailed in unseemly language the presiding officer.

Great consternation fell upon the British House of Commons when the discovery was made that an entire session had been gone through without "that bauble," as Oliver Cromwell called it, being upon the table. When Doctor Kenealy, friend and attorney of the Tichborne Claimant, was about being sworn in as a member of Parliament, it was observed that he had a cotton umbrella under his arm. A horror too profound for utterance fell upon the House, and all proceedings were arrested until the obnoxious compound of cotton and whalebone was removed.

We refer to these events for the purpose of impressing upon our delegated sovereigns from sovereign States, that unless the proprieties are preserved their dignity cannot be maintained. What would be thought of the British House of Lords if Lord Tomnoddy, for example, were to roll in very drunk, and make personal remarks touching the integrity of the presiding officer? The thought of such an event threatens insanity. The British Empire would totter, the throne shake, and the House of Lords disappear forever.

The inebriated Senator was not arrested, or even rebuked. We all know why. On his one vote depends the Republican control of the Senate. To seize upon, arrest, and cart away, under charge of drunken and disorderly conduct, the Republican majority of the Senate was so preposterous as not to be entertained.

As force could not be used, strategy was resorted to, and the inebriate Solon was invited out to take more drinks, in the hope that a little more liquid insanity would render him hors de combat.

This is not the first instance of embarrassment of like sort. When the men who organized the Star Route dishonesty of the Post-office Department were indicted, it was found that the head and front of this offending was a United States Senator. He held the one vote that gave his party its supremacy in the Senate. To send the Republican majority vote to the penitentiary was not to be thought of – and so the court was packed to acquit.

A body that subordinates its dignity to the supremacy of a party cannot long retain that awe-inspiring respect so necessary to its existence. Our House of Lords should bear in mind that the only reason – if such it may be called – for its existence, is in this dignity. If the Senate is not the holy, embalmed mummy of a dead king once known as State sovereignty, it is naught; therefore, when a Senator endangers this title to existence by unseemly conduct, either as an inebriate or as a bribe-taker, he should be incontinently expelled. The expulsion should be conducted with great ceremony. He should be divested of his robes in the presence of the august body – robes being procured for the occasion. One might be borrowed from the Supreme Court. Then the culprit should be conducted by two assistant Sergeants-at-Arms, one having hold of each arm. The Sergeant-at-Arms should march behind, bearing the mace. We believe the Senate has that utensil; if not, that of the House of Representatives could be procured. At the main entrance the Sergeant-at-Arms should fetch the mace into a charge, and planting the eagle in the small of the culprit's back, thrust him out. All the while the chaplain, in a solemn but distinct voice, should read the Service for the Dead. After, the presiding officer should give three distinct raps of his ivory gavel, and say in joyous but decorous voice, indicative of triumphant yet seemly satisfaction: "The expurgated Senate will now proceed with the business of legislating for the House of Representatives."

So necessary is dignity to the existence of this august body, that the presiding officer should have an eye continually to it; and when a Senator, in debate, makes himself ridiculous, he should at once be called to order. When, for example, the Hon. Senator from Vermont (Mr. Edmunds) gave his grotesque picture of a common American laborer being possessed of a piano, and a wife in silk attire, in his own cottage home, he should have been promptly called to order. The presiding officer should have remarked that the picture, being imperfect, was in a measure untrue, and as such could not be entertained by the Senate. The Senator, however, has the privilege of amending his sketch by saying that the laborer has not only the luxury found in a piano and silk-clad wife, but a mortgage on the premises. This, although improbable, is not impossible for a common laborer; and if the Hon. Senator will vouch for the fact that he knows one such, his statement may go on record for what it is worth.

This would serve to abridge the liberty of speech guaranteed to us by the Constitution. But we must remember that the same larger freedom exercised in a bar-room, or upon the streets, or on the floor of the House of Representatives, is a menace to the dignity of the Senate; and in view of this, freedom of speech is somewhat circumscribed. When, therefore, the Hon. Senator from Indiana (Mr. Voorhees) shakes his senatorial fist at the Hon. Senator from Kansas (Mr. Ingalls), and calls him an anathematized offspring of a female canine, or words to that effect, he fractures the dignity of the Senate, and further adjudication does not turn on the truth of the utterances as in a court, for we are forced to remember that it is one-half of the sovereign State of Indiana shaking its fist at one half of the sovereign State of Kansas. This is very like the old story of the sheriff of Posey County, Kentucky, who being agitated in a robust manner by an angry citizen, called on his assailant to desist, as he was "shaking all Posey County."

How long the practical common-sense citizens of the United States will submit to this worn-out superstition of a Senate is a question that strikes every thoughtful mind. The body was born of a narrow sectional feeling, long before steam navigation and railroads made the continent more of one body than was a single colony before the Revolution; and was a concession to State sovereignty, with the new and accepted principle of home rule found in State rights. It further confuses and demoralizes the civil rule of the majority under the Constitution, as it gives to Rhode Island or Delaware the same power held by New York or Pennsylvania.

It was believed by the framers of our government that it would be a conservative body, and serve as a restraint upon the popular impulses to be expected from the House. This has not proved to be the fact. The tenure of office given a Senator is of such length that it weakens the only control found in public opinion, and this august body is more extravagant, corrupt, and impulsive than the more popular body at the other end of the Capitol. If any one doubts this, let such doubter follow any appropriation bill, say that highway robbery called the River and Harbor Appropriation, or pensions, from the House to the Senate.

The Senate has long since survived its usefulness, if it ever had any; is to-day an object of contempt; and the sooner we have done with it the better off we shall be.