Democracy and Liberty. William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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to any increase of the Civil Service of the State or the nation until a great reform has been accomplished, beyond dispute, in the distribution of the multitude of minor offices,’ is, ‘happily, coming to hold more and more the balance of power.’ ‘There is, he adds,’ a powerful and growing tendency to take out of politics the public charities, the free schools, the public libraries, the public parks, and numerous other features of municipal administration.’ To take an office ‘out of politics,’ Mr. Gilman very characteristically explains, means ‘to take it out of corruption into honesty, and to treat it ‘as a public trust for the benefit of the whole people.’50
The growth of the number of minor officials, which is a natural consequence of the spoils system, and also of the prevailing tendency to extend the functions of government, is exciting serious alarm. A recent Civil Service Commission gives the number of ‘employees’ in the postal service of the United States, in 1891, as 112,800; the number of other ‘employees’ as 70,688. There has been, the commission says, ‘a very startling growth in the number of Government employees, compared with the growth of population.… The growth of a service which can be used for political ends is a rapidly increasing menace to republican government.’ Mr. Gilman quotes the statement of Mr. Curtis, that the first object of every reformer should be ‘to restrict still further the executive power as exercised by party.’ In America, that statesman says, ‘the superstition of Divine right has passed from the king to the party,’ and the belief that it can do no wrong ‘has become the practical faith of great multitudes.’ ‘It makes the whole Civil Service a drilled and disciplined army, whose living depends upon carrying elections at any cost for the party which controls it.’51
On the whole, as far as a stranger can judge, there seem to be in this field real signs of improvement, although they may not be very considerable or decisive. It must be remembered that the period immediately following the War was one peculiarly fitted for the growth of corruption. The sudden and enormous increase of debt, the corresponding multiplication of officials, the paralysis of political life in a great part of the country, and the many elements of social, industrial, and political anarchy that still prevailed, all made the task of professional politicians easy and lucrative. One great improvement which has taken place, and which has spread very swiftly over the United States, has been an alteration in the ballot system. In my own opinion, the ballot, in any country where politics rest on a really sound and independent basis, is essentially an evil. Power in politics should never be dissociated from responsibility, and the object of the ballot is to make the elector absolutely irresponsible. It obscures the moral weight of an election, by making it impossible to estimate the real force of opinion, knowledge, and character that is thrown on either side. It saps the spirit of independence and uprightness, and it gives great facilities for deception and fraud, for the play of mercenary, sordid, and malignant motives, and for the great political evil of sacerdotal influence. But the task of a statesman is, usually, to select the best alternative, and, where intimidation or corruption is very rife, the evils produced by secret voting may be less serious than those which it prevents.
In America, the system of ballot secured no real secrecy, and seemed, and indeed probably was, specially intended to throw all electoral power into the hands of ‘the machine.’ The agents of each organisation were suffered to stand at the poll and furnish the elector with ballot-papers inscribed with the names of their party candidates, and watchful eyes followed him till he placed the paper in the ballot-box. He might, it is true, change the name on the paper, but in the immense majority of cases the votes of the electors were dictated by and known to the party agent.52 A powerful movement, however, grew up, chiefly in 1890 and 1891, for changing this system and introducing what is called the Australian ballot. Its principal feature is that the State has taken the manufacture and distribution of ballot-papers out of the hands of the different parties, and secures to the voter absolute secrecy and freedom from interference at the polling-booths. In five years the Australian ballot has been adopted in thirty-five States, and it appears to have done something to diminish the power of the caucus organisation and to check the various fraudulent practices which had been common at elections.53
One great cause of the degradation of American politics has been the extreme facility with which votes have been given to ignorant immigrants, who had no experience in public life and no real interest in the well-being of the country. Most of the more intelligent American observers have agreed that the common schools, and the high level of knowledge and intelligence they secure, have been among the most important conditions of the healthy working of their institutions. For a long period the constituent bodies in America were certainly among the best educated in the world; but since the torrent of ignorant immigrants and negro voters has poured into them they can have no pretensions to this position.
In 1798, when revolutionary elements were very rife in Europe, and when their introduction into the United States excited serious alarm, a Naturalisation Act was carried increasing the necessary term of residence from five to fourteen years; but this Act was only in force for four years. The Know-nothing party, which played a considerable part in American politics in 1854 and the two following years, endeavoured to revive the policy of 1798. It grew up at the time when the evil effects of the great immigration that followed the Irish famine had become apparent, and it was assisted by a fierce anti-Popery fanaticism, which had been much strengthened by the hostility the Catholic clergy had begun to show to the common schools, and by the attempt of some of them to exclude Biblereading from those schools. It was guilty of not a little lawless violence, and although it succeeded, in 1855, in carrying nine of the States elections, and in 1856 nominated presidential candidates, it soon perished, chiefly through its divisions on the slavery question, and through the transcendent importance that question was beginning to take in American politics. It is said that Washington, in some moment of great danger, gave the order, ‘Put none but Americans on guard to-night,’ and these words were taken by the Know-nothings as their watchword. Their fundamental object was the exclusion of foreigners and Catholics from all national, State, county, and municipal offices, and a change in the naturalisation laws providing that no immigrant should become a citizen till after a residence of twenty-one, or, at the very least, of fifteen years.54
Few persons would now defend the proposal to introduce a religious disqualification into the American Constitution; but if the Know-nothings had succeeded in lengthening the period of residence required for naturalisation, they might have given a different character to American political life and incalculably raised its moral tone. Their best defence is to be found in the enormous scandals in the government of New York that immediately followed their defeat. To one class especially, a change in the laws of naturalisation would have been a priceless blessing. It is difficult to say how different the Irish element in America might have been if the poor, ignorant, helpless, famine-stricken peasantry who poured by tens of thousands into New York had been encouraged to pass at once into honest industry, scattered on farms over the face of the country, and kept for fifteen or twenty years out of the corrupting influence of American politics. But the shrewd party managers soon perceived that these poor men were among the best counters in their game. The immediate prospect of much higher wages than they had been accustomed to kept an immense proportion of them in the great city where they landed. They had no one to guide them. They were hardly more fitted than children to make their way under new conditions in a strange land, and almost their only genuine political feeling was hatred of England. Like the Germans, they showed from the first a marked tendency to congregate in great towns. It was computed in 1890, that a third part of the Irish in America were still to be found in the ten largest towns; that, taking the population of those towns together, one out of every thirteen persons was Irish, and that in New York, out of a population of a little more than 1,200,000, 198,000 were Irish.55 Five years were required for naturalisation by the Federal law, but some State laws gave a vote after a shorter residence, and the Federal law was easily and constantly violated. Immense numbers, who were absolutely ignorant of all American public questions, and absolutely indifferent to public interests, were speedily drilled in the party organisation. They soon learned their lesson. They acquired a rare aptitude in running the machine, in turning the balance of doubtful elections, in voting together in disciplined masses, in using political power for private gain. There are few sadder histories than the influence of the Irish race on American