The Outlook for This Republic
By L. A. S.
PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH, the well-known English writer, predicts the early downfall of the American republic. Professor Smith does not speak from the standpoint of an enemy of the United States, but from that of a friend, having now, proved his friendship for this country in England during the Civil War. He is not prejudiced against American institutions, but he sees those institutions in danger of overthrow through factional strife and the departure from republican principles of government. “A nation which deliberately gives itself up to government by faction,” says Professor Smith, “signs its own doom. The end may be delayed, but it is sure. The party organizations have overlaid the American Constitution. For this the framers of the Constitution are not to blame. Their sagacity must have been supernatural to foresee the machine and the boss.” The Republican and Democratic parties in the United States are now two standing machines, waging everlasting war for the presidency and an immense patronage. Platforms are made up when a presidential election impends, simply with a view to carrying that election. The parties have no fixed creed or abiding character. . . . One who had formed his idea of the Republican party half a century ago would hardly know the party again now. Lincoln, with his pure patriotism and humanitarianism, would find himself strangely out of place. The grand aim of each party is to prevent the country from being successfully governed by its rival. Each will do anything to catch votes, and anything rather than lose them. Government, consequently, is at the mercy of any organization which has votes on a large scale to sell. To this Professor Smith might truthfully have added the further statement that the sessions of the national legislature now consist of little more than a contest for supremacy between the two factions into which the legislative branches of the government are divided. No measure brought before Congress can be considered seriously and estimated at its true value by more than one of these factions, because, in the view of the other, it is merely a party measure. No matter how real or how serious the danger that needs to be averted, no matter how great the need of legislation upon any particular point, when legislation is urged by a speaker of one party, his political opponents lightly turn aside his words, on the ground that he is only “talking for political effect.” It almost seems to have come to the point where party loyalty demands that an opponent’s words on the floor of Congress should always be treated in this way. Thus it has come to pass that no subject of more consequence than routine pension and appropriation measures can be treated seriously, or obtain the consideration that it deserves. “It is surely impossible,” Professor Smith believes, “that any nation should endure such a system forever.” “Even now,” he says, “the balance wavers,” and “it is a critical hour in the life of the American republic and therefore in the life of the world.” L. A. S.