Government for the People

representatives of the people have employed their power to the aggrandizement of their party rather than for the service of the state. They can draw an indictment against party government on so many counts as almost to convict it without trial. On the other hand we find many persons who affirm the necessity of parties and who, while minimizing the evils of partisanship, are loud in their assertions of the service which a party renders in the process of government. Every new voter is faced by the problem of party allegiance. So is every old voter who thinks. It is, therefore, extremely pertinent to inquire into the relation which the citizen should sustain toward parties. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century parties were generally regarded with abhorrence by patriotic men. Washington in his "Farewell Address," warned his countrymen in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party. "This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its roots in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissensions, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despot...