AMERICAN POLITICS

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, January 29, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 5

AMERICAN POLITICS.

OUR COUNTRY’S WEAKNESS AND DANGER.

FROM the Prelude to one of Joseph Cook’s late Monday Lectures we give the following significant paragraphs:—

Confucius, wishing to give a lesson of supreme value in politics, pointed one of his pupils to a lofty obelisk, and said what we might say of the historic shaft on Bunker Hill, “Seest thou yonder tall object? in its uprightness is its strength.”

It may seem unpatriotic to affirm that there is more demand for uprightness in the United States to-day than supply. Where are the looms that weave honest statesmen? It is easy to point out the looms that weave tricky men and deceptive robes for unscrupulous enterprises. The rushing of the machinery which in this country prepares a large supply of unrighteousness in politics, is audible from side to side of the land. The mere politician is a spoilman. The spoils system tempts all fourth and fifth rate politicians to become merely spoilmen. If we had a system of retaining in office those who occupy posts in the civil service, and not turning them out except for bad behavior, we should find their chief attention devoted to the performance of good work, because that would be the root of the tenure of office. Millions and millions beyond what the people pay for the civil service are represented by the spoils which are at stake whenever great parties compete for the Presidential chair.

Are Louisiana and Maine needles which fraud has been threading for work in preparing the shroud of the American Republic? My generation in America is and always will be a remnant decimal. It is a tattered fragment left over after battle. It has only one arm left to it; and you must not blame those who represent my class in American society if we put this single surviving member a little roughly on the collar of current casualties. There is a bandage around this arm yet; and you must not accuse me of lack of patriotism, if, facing both political parties, and in likelihood of offending both, I unwind that bandage and use it as a rope with which to throttle the passing scoundrelisms of the hour, whether found in Maine or Louisiana.

On three occasions of great importance there have been undecided Presidential elections, and the vagueness of the Constitution as to the duty of the count has given trouble.

It has been historically proved, therefore, that the method of counting electoral votes in a closely contested Presidential election is the weak spot in our national Constitution.

Upon precisely the same rock which three times has endangered the ship of State in American politics, the republic is now drifting for the fourth time. Upon the one weak point in the Constitution, a terrific strain is likely to be brought; for the spoils at stake are greater than ever.

It is plainly the duty of Congress to determine beforehand the method of the count, and yet Congress takes no steps in this direction, and it delays because each party is watching for its own interests rather than for those of the people at large.

No amount of constitutional machinery, however, can save us, without an intense public sentiment created by discussion on the independent platform, in the press and in the churches.

For one, I would have every church-member who is convicted of taking or giving bribes in elections, large or small, expelled from God’s house. [A voice, Amen. Prolonged applause.]

The eyes of the world are fastened on the now thickening difficulties of the experiment of universal suffrage in the United States. Every disease of the suffrage here discourages republican institutions throughout the world.