Author: Charles Evans Hughes

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 26

ISBN-13: 9781230225692

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ... LECTURE IV POLITICAL PARTIES (Continued) As self-discipline draws the line in individual conduct between use and abuse, and the wise man is the one who knows where to draw it, so in the self-discipline of democracy we must be alive to the abuses of party organization. These abuses tend to corrupt the very core of government and the intelligent citizen should not only be severe in denouncing them, but most solicitous to apprehend their causes and the most practicable methods by which, in any important degree, they may be corrected. Party organization for the benefit of party is one thing; party organization for the benefit of party managers and party workers is quite another. The degeneracy of the former into the latter is most natural and is due to the working of selfinterest in circumstances of peculiar opportunity. It is natural that those whose main business is to maintain party solidarity should concern themselves chiefly with the interests of a phalanx of voters upon whose fidelity they can absolutely depend. The constant association of the members of these groups with their exclusively partisan outlook tends to deaden the sensibility to those political tendencies which are more largely reflected in independent opinion. The blindness of those who make a business of politics is frequently amazing. They learn too late and the lessons even of condign punishment are soon forgotten. They rarely appreciate their own standing in public estimate. This is not due to lack of native ability or of skill in certain methods of management, but is largely the result of their own close occupation with the baser and more sordid motives of political action. The conditions of his work are such as largely to hinder the political manager from taking...