An American Politician: A NovelCrawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
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An American Politician: A Novel
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Political fiction; Politicians -- Fiction
"Party, party, party! A man would rather commit a crime than vote against
his party. The evil runs through the country from East to West, from North
to South, eating at the nation's heartstrings, gnawing at her sinews, and
undermining her strength. The time is coming, is even now come, when two
or three parties no longer suffice to express the disunion of the Union.
There are three to-day: to-morrow there will be five, the next day ten,
twenty, a hundred, till every man's hand is against his fellow, and his
fellow's against him. The divisions have grown so wide that the majority
and the minority are but the extremities of a countless set of internecine
majorities and minorities.
"Members of parties are bound no longer by the honest determination to do
the right, to choose the right, and to uphold the right--they are bound by
fearful penalties to support their own man, were he the very chiefest
outcast of the earth, lest the man of another party be elected in his
place. The adverse candidate is perhaps avowedly better fitted for the
office, a hundred times more honest, more experienced, more worthy of
respect. But he belongs to the enemy. Down with him! let him perish in his
honesty and righteousness! There is no good in him, for he is a Democrat!
There is no good in him, for he is a Republican! He is a scoundrel, for he
is a Southerner! He is a thief, for he is a Northerner! He is the prince
of liars, for he comes from the West! He is the scum of mankind, for he is
from the East! The people rage and rend each other, and the frenzy grows
apace with the hour, till honor and justice, truth and manliness, are lost
together in the furious chaos of human elements. The tortured airs of
heaven howl out curses in a horrid unison, this fair free soil of ours,
dishonored and befouled, moans beneath our feet in a dismal drone of
hopeless woe; there is no rock or cavern or ghostly den of our mighty land
but hisses back the echo of some hideous curse, and hell itself is upon
earth, split and rent into multiplied hells.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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