OFFICE-SEEKING AND OFFICE-SEEKERS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · April 29, 1880

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 18

OFFICE-SEEKING AND OFFICE-SEEKERS.

THERE was a time in the history of this country when men would have blushed to employ their own efforts to secure their election to political office. To-day our leading politicians not only announce themselves as candidates for office, but put themselves at the head of a vast system of agencies designed to secure their election. The newspapers which can be purchased or enlisted are filled with praise of the aspirant. The government patronage is freely promised as a reward, in the event of success, for services to be rendered. The election of local delegates to nominating conventions is controlled, State conventions are captured, and a “boom” is manufactured. Hitherto, the men who have thus openly promoted their own candidacy have not been rewarded with success, the choice of party conventions having usually fallen upon some one who had figured less prominently in the preparatory campaign. But year by year the evil grows bolder and more mischievous, and the people do not seem to realize that from the spirit which seeks to compass its own elevation by intrigue and solicitation to the spirit which seizes and holds the prize by force, there is but a step, and a narrow step.

Closely allied to this evil, and to some extent arising from it, is a still more shameful and malignant evil of fraud in elections. The use of fraudulent ballots, the disfranchisement and intimidation of legal voters, the ousting of legally elected representatives from their seats, have become painfully frequent. Through these means, the confidence of the people in the wisdom and efficiency of their institutions is rapidly failing, and when that confidence is gone our only alternatives are anarchy and despotism.

The divorce of government from God and from moral and religious ideas, and the loss of the sense of official accountability to a Higher Power, and the consequent degradation of official station into a prize to be sought in a willful spirit and for personal ends, are the explanation of the shameful scenes which offend our eyes to-day. The remedy, the only salvation of the nation, lies in the powerful, all-pervading and controlling influence of a national conscience, quickened and nourished by the religion of the Bible.—Christian Statesman.