Both have way either of advocacy or of condemnation. asserted that it is the duty of railways to serve the people, and not to tyrannize over or defraud them, so the Inter-State Commerce Bill which has lately been passed with this view cannot be called a party measure. Finances have on the whole been well managed, and debt paid off with surprising speed. But there have been, and are still, serious problems raised by the condition of the currency. Both parties have made mistakes, and mistakes about equally culpable, for though the Republicans, having more frequently commanded a Congressional majority, have had superior opportunities for blundering, the Democrats have once or twice more definitely committed themselves to pernicious doctrines. Neither party now proposes a clear and definite policy. It is the same as regards minor questions, such as women's suffrage or international copyright, or convict labour. Neither party has any distinctive attitude on these matters; neither is more likely, or less likely, than the other to pass a measure dealing with them. It is the same with regard to the doctrine of laissez faire as opposed to governmental interference. Neither Republicans nor Democrats can be said to be friends or foes of State interference: each will advocate it when there seems a practically useful object to be secured, or when the popular voice seems to call for it. It is the same with foreign policy. Both parties are practically agreed not only as to the general principles which ought to rule the conduct of the country, but as to the application of these principles. The party which opposes the President may at any given moment seek to damage him by defeating some particular proposal he has made, but this it will do as a piece of temporary strategy, not in pursuance of any settled doctrine. Yet one cannot say that there is to-day no difference between the two great parties. There is a difference of spirit or sentiment perceptible even by a stranger when, after having mixed for some time with members of the one he begins to mix with those of the other, and doubtless much more patent to a native American. It resembles (though it is less marked than) the difference of tone and temper between Tories and Liberals in England. The intellectual view of a Democrat of the better sort is not quite the same as that of his Republican compeer, neither is his ethical standard. Each of course thinks meanly of the other; but while the Democrat thinks the Republican "dangerous" (i.e. likely to undermine the Constitution) the Republican is more apt to think the Democrat vicious and unscrupulous. So in England your Liberal fastens on stupidity as the characteristic fault of the Tory, while the Tory suspects the morals and religion more than he despises the intelligence of the Radical. It cannot be charged on the American parties that they have drawn towards one another by forsaking their old principles. It is time that has changed the circumstances of the country, and made those old principles inapplicable. They would seem to have erred rather by clinging too long to outworn issues, and by neglecting to discover and work out new principles capable of solving the problems which now perplex the country. In a country so full of change and movement as America new questions are always coming up, and must be answered. New troubles surround a government, and a way must be found to escape from them; new diseases attack the nation, and have to be cured. The duty of a great party is to face these, to find answers and remedies, applying to the facts of the hour VOL. II 2 A the doctrines it has lived by, so far as they are still applicable, and when they have ceased to be applicable, thinking out new doctrines conformable to the main principles and tendencies which it represents. This is a work to be accomplished by its ruling minds, while the habit of party loyalty to the leaders powerfully serves to diffuse through the mass of followers the conclusions of the leaders and the reasonings they have employed. "But," the European reader may ask, "is it not the interest as well as the duty of a party thus to adapt itself to new conditions? Does it not, in failing to do so, condemn itself to sterility and impotence, ultimately, indeed, to supersession by some new party which the needs of the time have created?" This is what happens in England and in Europe generally. Probably it will happen in the long run in America also, unless the parties adapt themselves to the new issues, just as the Whig party fell in 1852-57 because it failed to face the problem of slavery. That it happens more slowly may be ascribed partly to the completeness and strength of the party organizations, which make the enthusiasm generated by ideas less necessary, partly to the fact that the questions on which the two great parties still hesitate to take sides are not presently vital to the well-being of the country, partly also to the smaller influence in America than in Europe of individual leaders. English parties, which hesitate long over secondary questions, might hesitate longer than is now their practice over vital ones also, were they not accustomed to look for guidance to their chiefs, and to defer to the opinion which the chiefs deliver. And it is only by courage and the capacity for initiative that the chiefs themselves retain their position. CHAPTER LV COMPOSITION OF THE PARTIES THE less there is in the tenets of the Republicans and Democrats to make their character intelligible to a European reader, so much the more desirable is it to convey some idea of what may be called their social and local, their racial and ecclesiastical complexions. The Republican party was formed between 1854 and 1856 chiefly out of the wrecks of the Whig party, with the addition of the Abolitionists and Free Soilers, who, disgusted at the apparent subservience to the South of the leading northern Whigs, had for some time previously acted as a group by themselves, though some of them had been apt to vote for Whig candidates. They had also recruits from the Free Soil Democrats, who had severed themselves from the bulk of the Democratic party, and some of whom claimed to be true Jeffersonians in joining the party which stood up against the spread of slavery. The Republicans were therefore from the first a Northern party, more distinctly so than the Federalists had been at the close of the preceding century, and much more distinctly so than the 1 The name Republican was given to the new party, not without the hope of thereby making it easier for these old school Democrats to join it, for in Jefferson's day his party had been called Republican. Whigs, in whom there had been a pretty strong Southern element. it The Whig element brought to the new party solidity, political experience, and a large number of wealthy and influential adherents. The Abolitionist element gave force and enthusiasm, qualities invaluable for the crisis which came in 1861 with the secession of all save four of the slave-holding States. During the war, it drew to itself nearly all the earnestness, patriotism, religious and moral fervour, which the North and West contained. It is still, in those regions, the party in whose ranks respectable, steady, pious, well-conducted men are to be looked for. If you find yourself dining with one of "the best people" in any New England city, or in Philadelphia, or in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago, or Minneapolis, you assume that the guest sitting next you is a Republican, almost as confidently as in English county society you would assume your neighbour to be a Tory; that is to say, you may sometimes be wrong, but in four cases out of five you will be right. In New York the presumption is weaker, though even there you will be right three times out of five. One may say that all over the North, the merchants, manufacturers, and professional men of the smaller perhaps even more than of the larger towns, tend to be Republicans. So too are the farmers, particularly in the North-west, in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa. The working class in the cities is divided, but the more solid part of it, the church-goers and total abstainers, are generally Republicans. A number, still large, though of course daily diminishing, are soldiers of the Civil War; and these naturally rally to the old flag. When turning south wards one reaches the borders of the old slave States, |