In Praise of Politicians

‘I HAD as lief be a Brownist as a politician,’ said bibulous Sir Andrew Ague-cheek. Sir Andrew expressed the sentiment of his class. Since the time when a little band of Brownists sailed away to Massachusetts Bay, the sect has come into better repute, but ‘politician’ is still used as a term of disparagement. And curiously enough, it is never so frequently used in this way as among the descendants of those Brownists who in the cabin of the Mayflower organized themselves into a ‘body politic.’

European observers continually express surprise at the American attitude toward politics. In England, politics is the national sport. People follow each move with eager interest, and discuss the idiosyncrasies of the players. The debates in Parliament, with the thrust and counterthrust of keen wit, furnish entertainment for the kingdom. It is preëminently a gentleman’s game, and success gives real distinction.

In America we do not exhibit such a sportsmanlike spirit. We take our political pleasures sadly. The average American citizen admits that politicians need watching, but it does not occur to him that it is as interesting to watch them as to watch a football game. There is a sinister suggestion in the phrase ‘to play politics.’

There are several reasons for this lack of appreciation. For one thing, the rules which we have adopted make the game itself less interesting to the spectator than it is in some other countries. In the British Parliament a crisis may come at any time. An alert opposition is always waiting for a chance to turn the government out. A mistake has results that are immediate. There is a spectacular appeal to the country. In Washington a majority party may make the most stupid blunder, and nothing happens except that it goes on becoming more stupid. When the people come to the conclusion that it is in a permanently comatose condition, they decently remove it from its sphere of non-action.

The territorial magnitude of the United States makes it difficult to focus attention on any one place. In a compact country where the newspapers of the capital reach every part on the same day, it is easy to become acquainted with all the principal contestants. The spectators have an unrestricted view of the field. But it is hard to interest the people of Maine and the people of Idaho in the same persons or policies. It takes an appreciable length of time for a wave of public opinion to cross the continent. The ‘ favorite son ’ of one state may have all the virtues necessary for a national hero, but it is a task of some magnitude and difficulty to advertise his existence to forty or forty-five oblivious commonwealths, especially if their attention is distracted by favorite sons of their own.

All this is but to say that the way of the politician is hard, but beyond this is the fact that his calling is not highly esteemed. A machine used in mixing cement is advertised as ‘The Mixer that makes money.’ The ordinary American would accept this as an adequate definition of a politician.

One learns after a while not to quarrel with the Dictionary. If a word falls into bad habits of thought and takes up wicked associations, it is usually impossible to reform it. There, for example, is the word ‘villain.’ It originally indicated a farm laborer. Poor fellow, he had a hard time and was more sinned against than sinning. But the gentry who sinned against him had more influence than he in making the language. Their grumblings against his shortcomings have been incorporated into English speech, and now we think of a villain as a very bad character — indeed one of the worst. My blood boils — philologically considered — when I think of the bundle of prejudices bound up in this single word. But what can I do about it? If at a meeting for the Uplift of Country Life I were to express my sympathy with all villains, and declare that I would like to return to the soil and do the work of a villain, I am sure my remarks would be misconstrued. If my speech were reported, I should lose membership in the Grange.

In this case we let the unfortunate word go, because we have another to describe the agricultural sons of toil. We can talk of ‘churls’ and ‘villains’ without any indignity to labor. The history of such words is instructive. First the word is descriptive of a class; then it becomes a term of reproach for that class; then the class emerges from the shadow of reproach and the word is left hanging in mid-air. It is a garment of dispraise left for evil-doers in general.

We might leave the word ‘ politician ’ to be used in the bad sense if we had another which we might use in a good sense.

The shifty, self-seeking politician has always been a well-known character. He stands in the same relation to serious politics that the shyster does to the profession of law, or the quack to medicine. Every army has its campfollowers, every living body its parasites. But in this case the lower has not only usurped the name of the higher, but has also obscured its function. The term ‘politician ’ has been handed over to the political quack, and we have no name left by which to designate the regular practitioner. It is as if we had only one name for all who do business on the great waters, and were unable to discriminate between the merchant and the pirate.

We make an attempt to disguise our verbal poverty by speaking highly of the impeccable person whom we call a ‘statesman.' But this lip-service is hollow. If you were to ask for a list of contemporary statesmen, you would be told that your inquiry is premature. The statesman is an historical character. His virtues are associated with obituaries. Moreover, the conception of a statesman does not include that which is fundamental to the politician, namely, the ability to get himself elected.

We have borrowed from the Romans the term ‘candidate,’ or white-robed one. The Roman citizen announced his willingness to serve the Republic in an official position by appearing in a loose white toga. It was white to symbolize the candor of his nature, and was worn loose so that he might more easily display his scars. Our political prudery makes us shrink from the idea of open candidacy. The demure statesman of the popular imagination is supposed to act strictly on the principle that the office must seek the man. But we should hardly call one a politician who was not willing to meet the office at least halfway. He would say, ‘My dear Office, I hear that you are seeking a Man. It is a pleasant coincidence, for here I am.'

Milton ventured to use the word ‘politicaster’ to indicate the person who stands to the real politician in the same relation that the poetaster does to the poet. He is one of the large and ambitious family of the Would-Be’s. He imitates what he is incapable of understanding. Let us adopt the term politicaster, and then enjoy the experience of expressing our heartfelt admiration for the honorable and quick-witted gentlemen who bear without reproach the grand old name of politician; a name ‘defamed by every charlatan, and soiled by all ignoble use.’

The politicaster shall be our scapegoat. We shall hurl at him all the familiar disparaging epithets, we shall put upon him all the shame of our cities and the disgraces of our legislatures, and send him into the wilderness. Then we may sit down and converse on the most interesting and important of all human affairs — politics — and on the men who choose politics as a lifework.

But because the poor politicaster is a sinner, we need not disdain to learn from him something as to the nature of politics. The dullest poetaster who ever put pen to paper can tell us something about verse. He knows, for example, that the lines begin with capital letters, and that they end with a rhyme, unless it be blank verse. All this is, as Carlyle would say, ‘significant of much.’ It indicates the important fact that poetry is in some way or other different from prose. Many scientific teachers of literature never find this out; the poetaster discovers it because he has been trying to make poetry, though he has hard luck.

So the politicaster is trying to be a politician according to his lights. He discovers that politics is different from some other things, as for instance from a Sunday School. This discovery fills him with such glee that he never tires of proclaiming it. He also discovers that politics is different from a Nervine Institute. He assures you that he is not in politics for his health. He is able to see that politics may be differentiated from Jurisprudence and Moral Science and many other excellent things. He learns that it may have an existence that is independent of the sister arts of Grammar or Elocution. He knows that in order to have ‘influence’ it is not necessary to thrill listening senates. Indeed, he has observed that, for the most part, senates do not listen. He resolves to practice the industrial virtues. While the Scholar in Politics is delighting the intellectuals who do not frequent the polls, the humble politicaster ‘saws wood,’ ‘grinds axes,’ and ‘looks after his fences,’ and ‘rolls logs,’ and walks softly in ‘gum shoes.’

The Honorable George Washington Plunkett of Tammany Hall declared that he wished but one inscription to be placed upon his tombstone: ‘Heseen his opportunity and he took it.’ Here you have the starting-point of all politics, good or bad. Opportunism is the protoplasm out of which all varieties are evolved. Politics consists not in making programmes, or in passing judgment on accomplished facts, but in seeing and seizing opportunities. Now, opportunities are kittle cattle. They do not stand around waiting to be taken home and brought up by hand. A man may be very honorable, and conscientious, and even erudite, and may never have seen an opportunity in his life. The politicaster is looking for small opportunities, for such pickings and stealings as a careless public may leave for those of his kind. The great politician is looking for great opportunities. He knows that he can do nothing till they come, but he must be prepared to recognize them instantly, and to grasp them in the brief moment when they are within his reach.

Said Abraham Lincoln, ‘I claim not to have controlled events, but confess that events have controlled me. Now at the end of three years’ struggle the nation’s condition is not what either party or any man desired or expected.’

There spoke not the dignified statesman of the academic tradition who moulds events as the sculptor moulds his clay. Lincoln spoke as a highminded, quick-witted politician, dealing, as every politician must, with the unexpected. Events happen. The politician happens along at the same time. Their encounter makes history. The man of science can prepare for his experiments in the laboratory. He can literally make experiments. Not so the politician. He cannot make an experiment, he is an experiment. And if he fails he is not sure that the public will care to make him again.

‘Life,’ said Marcus Aurelius, ‘is not so much like dancing as like wrestling.’ That is to say, the movements are not determined by music, but by the motions of an alert antagonist — it is catch as catch can. Abraham Lincoln and Marcus Aurelius and George Washington Plunkett would agree that politics consists, not in the acceptance of abstract formulas, but in being quick to catch opportunities. The difference of opinion would come in the answer to the question ‘opportunities for what?’

Matthew Arnold, writing of Man and Nature, says,—

One may say that the good politician has all that the politicaster has and more, and in that more lies all his hope of winning the lasting admiration of mankind; but his high disinterested virtues must be built upon political virtues of the common sort. The politician must not be above his business. He must be ‘a good mixer,’ he must understand the meaning of loyalty to friends and comrades, he must have a shrewd sense of the difference between an accomplished fact and a work that it is desirable to accomplish, he must know the value and the limitation of organization, he must be sensitive to public opinion and must not confound it with the opinion of his own class. Dealing with human nature, he must know the strength of his materials, he must be quick-witted and patient and tolerant, and if he falls he must be able to pick himself up before other people know that he has fallen.

The work necessary for obtaining influence which the politicaster does furtively, the man who takes politics seriously does with noble and engaging frankness. Even log-rolling may be redeemed from its vulgar implications. After all, the old-time merry-making of the frontier furnished the best symbol of political action in a democracy. All the settlers gathered in the clearings to do together what no one could do alone. ‘You help roll my logs and I will help roll yours.’ In this reciprocity in effort there was nothing unworthy. It is only when the bargain is underhanded and cannot be proclaimed in the light of day, that it becomes dangerous.

The good politician rolls his logs in public, and is not ashamed of his job. He needs the help of others, and he knows that others need his help. When a hundred honorable men come together, each with a purpose of his own, each must expect to yield something if he is to gain anything. It is likely that more than one good measure will be proposed, and if one is skillful, good measures may be made to help one another. Here, without any sacrifice of honor, is a wide field for good fellowship and tolerance. The austere, uncompromising patriot, whose mind is impenetrable when it is once made up, who is incapable of sympathizing with other men’s aspirations, and who insists on all or nothing, is an egotist who does great service when he happens to be right. Unfortunately it often happens that he is wrong, and then his private conscience must be overcome by the common sense of the crowd.

The politicaster is a mere time-server. The politician also aspires to serve the time, but in more manly fashion. He must meditate long on the third chapter of Ecclesiastes: ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: . . . a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; . . . a time to break down, and a time to build up; ... a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; ... a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.’

The politician’s problem is to know when these times come around. There is no one to help him. He must be his own alarm-clock. It is of the nature of his calling that his duty is unpredictable. His conscience can keep no regular office-hours. It must be prepared at any moment for a hurry call. It must be ‘to true occasion true.’

But what is the occasion ? Does it demand boldness or moderation? Should he go slowly or with decisive swiftness? His political sagacity is tested by his dealings with facts which he cannot fully understand. It is not a written examination to which he is subjected when he has ample leisure to present his matured thought. He must be able to read the signs of the times at sight.

One reason why we are likely to speak slightingly of the ethics of the politician is that he can never exhibit his good qualities systematically. Benjamin Franklin tells us how he developed his character by choosing twelve virtues, and, for convenience in bookkeeping, practicing only one at a time. By giving a week to each virtue, he was able to get through four courses in a year, and still have some time to spare.

Franklin ’s method seems more adapted to his earlier life as a tradesman than to his later career as a politician. The politician cannot arrange his moral stock-in-trade in an orderly fashion, and have a special bargain-day for each virtue. When the Occasion demands bold action, it will hardly do to ask it to call again, as this week is devoted to Caution and General Benevolence.

That formal consistency which is so much admired in good society is not for him. A member of Parliament solemnly declared to the House, ‘ I take my stand on progress.' Whereupon Disraeli remarked, ‘ It occurs to me that progress is a somewhat slippery thing to take one’s stand on.’ The fact is that under such circumstances a dignified stand is hardly possible; the best one can do is to keep moving.

The politician must expect to be misunderstood by those who do not deal with his large and complicated problems. His moral courage is tested by the way in which he meets the criticism of those who should be his friends, but who unfortunately are not. Cardinal Newman wrote,—

He tells us how at last he cast aside that ‘finer sense’ and that ‘sorer shame’ because he learned that ‘such dread of sin was indolence.’

It is a lesson that the high-minded politician learns. There is a moral indolence which manifests itself in dread of sin and of any personal contact with sinners. When any radical measure of reform is proposed, the reformer must be prepared to meet, not only the opposition of those whose selfish interests have been disturbed, but the opposition of good people who have been made uncomfortable by his revelations of unwelcome truth.

When he has overcome this two-fold opposition and has begun constructive work, he will meet the criticism of the pure idealists, who, seeing that he has done so much, now demand of him an impossible perfection.

I have always sympathized with Hercules. After each labor he would come home tired, but feeling that he had done a creditable day’s work. Being human, — or at least half-human, — Hercules would wait for a bit of appreciation. At last he would say modestly, —

‘I wrestled to-day with the Nemean lion and I rather think I got the best of him.’

‘That’s nothing,’ would be the chilly answer. ‘It is a mere temporizing with evil. While you are about it why don’t you slay the Lernean hydra? A lion is a mere detail, the hydra is the thing.’

When he had come back from cleansing the Augean stables, he would be reminded that he had n’t seized the girdle of the Queen of the Amazons, or brought the golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides, or brought up Cerberus from Hades. He probably was afraid of the dog.

Such twitting on facts must be expected by every one who leaves the ‘still air’ of delightful studies ‘to plunge into a sea of noises and hoarse disputes.’ The politician deals confessedly with the Expedient. Now, it is the fate of the Expedient to be brought always into comparison with the Best. Indeed, the Expedient is a poor relation of the Best, — it is the Best Possible under the Circumstances. It is a superlative that has gone into business and must work for its living. It has to be a good manager in order to get along at all; and its rich relatives, the Absolute Bests of Utopia Centre, are always blaming it because it does not get on faster.

Because the politician is concerned with questions of expediency, it does not follow that his morality is less high than that of his critics. It only means that his moral problems are more complicated than theirs. He has not merely to satisfy his personal conscience, but to appeal to the consciences of those whose coöperation is necessary for any large undertaking. In every decision he has to consider the actual alternative, and assume responsibility for results. He has in mind, not a single circumstance, but always a train of circumstances.

As there is preventive medicine, so there is preventive politics. It deals with evils before they have time to develop. It treats causes rather than symptoms. The practitioner of preventive politics is looked upon with distrust by those of the old school. They treat the ills of yesterday according to wellknown formulas, but it seems to them visionary to attempt to forestall the ills of to-morrow.

Because of its complexity, politics has often been treated as a black art. Indeed, its ways have at many times been devious and dark. But, like all other arts, its general trend is toward simplicity. The modern Boss, who prides himself on his Macchiavellian craft, and who seeks to accomplish results by indirection, is a quaint survival of a former order of things. His old-fashioned methods are those which were highly successful in the days before compulsory education and the daily newspaper and the telegraph and the telephone enabled the people to have that familiarity with their bosses which breeds contempt.

Macchiavelli based his statecraft on the assumption that deceit deceives. He informed his prince that it was necessary to cultivate the good-will of his people, for on this his power ultimately depended. Now, the people demanded of their rulers fidelity, friendship, humanity, and religion. Said the political adviser, ' It is unnecessary for a prince to have ail these good qualities which I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.’ He goes on to say that it would be a decided advantage not to have qualities which one should appear to have, as it would leave much greater freedom of action.

The art of politics as thus expounded is simplicity itself. It is to tell lies in such a manner as not to get found out till the lies have had time to do their work. Of course, a lie has its natural enemies who will eventually get the better of it; but if it has a sufficient start it will accomplish its purpose.

It will be seen that this method of statecraft depends for its success on a time-allowance. There must be a sufficient interval between the utterance of the political lie and its refutation. A lie must get itself believed by its victims for a long enough time to allow them to act upon it. Otherwise it is ‘a vain thing for safety.’

Up to comparatively recent times these conditions existed. It might be months after an event happened before it was known to any but a little circle of the initiated. Under such conditions the arts of concealment flourished.

Among the English gentlemen of the seventeenth century there was none of nobler disposition than Sir Henry Wotton. He wrote with perfect sincerity,—

But Sir Henry Wotton was also an accomplished diplomat, and on his way to Venice as ambassador of James I he gave his famous definition,‘An ambassador is an honest gentleman who lies abroad for the good of his country.’

Modern improvements in the means for the diffusion of knowledge have not brought about the millennium, but they have reduced the old statecraft to a condition of inglorious futility. ‘The fine Italian hand’ is now seen only in peanut politics. When a falsehood can be contradicted as soon as it is uttered, it has no longer sufficient capital on which to do a large business. The practical politician will ask, ‘Why not tell the truth in the first place?’

Purists are always scolding because so many persons misuse the verb ‘ transpire.’ We are reminded that an event does not transpire when it happens, but only when it becomes known to the public. There was a time when this was a very important distinction, but nowadays we are inclined to disregard it, because the two things are generally simultaneous.

An illustration of the change that has taken place within a very few years may be seen in the history of the campaign lie, known in American politics as the ‘ roorbach.’ The name first became current in 1844, when a mendacious statement, purporting to be taken from Roorback’s Toar through the Western and Southern States, was published with the intent to destroy Mr. Polk’s chances for the presidency. Under conditions then existing, it was thought safe to launch this falsehood two months before the election. By 1880, when the Morey letter was sprung upon Garfield, the expectancy of life for the roorbach had been reduced to two weeks. At present the warning,‘Look out for roorbachs’ does not appear till forty-eight hours before the voting begins. This alarming decrease in the longevity of the roorbach must convince even the most ‘ astute ’ politicaster that it is a bad risk.

Thanks to modern invention, the accomplished truth-teller is now more than a match for the most accomplished liar. There is an ever-widening field in which the honest man may show his utmost skill. But to win success in the field, he must deal with truth, not as a man of science but as a politician. It is not a thing to be analyzed, classified and put on the shelf. He is on the lookout for a truth that will be effective, a solid chunk that he can use as a missile. The more obvious it is, the better. His business is to give it initial velocity.

Modern democracy depends for its very existence on publicity. This is its armor of light, by which it is protected from its insidious foes. But while we all agree to this in the abstract, yet there lingers with us the feeling that publicity is vulgar. James Russell Lowell, stanch believer as he was in an ideal democracy, yet confessed that he was ‘a born disciple of an elder time,’ and instinctively shrank from the

This scholarly fastidiousness must be overcome before we can do justice to those who do our greatest and most needed work. It is not to the disparagement of a public man to say that he enjoys the element in which he must work. A retiring disposition has a rare charm of its own, but it is not a political virtue. Everything must here be writ large, so that the wayfaring man, though a fool, may not err in regard to it. The revival hymn says, —

The private citizen may be content to have a purpose true; a politician must meditate in the night-watches over the best way of making it known. This requires a good deal of moral advertising. Self-assertion is here necessary. Pushing is frowned upon in polite society, but in politics one who is not inclined to push is likely to yield to the pull. Especially is this quality of personal aggressiveness needed when any advance movement is contemplated.

Said John Morley, ‘Men are so engaged by the homely pressure of each day as it comes, and the natural solicitudes of common life are so instant, that a bad institution or a monstrous piece of misgovernment is always endured in patience for years after the remedy has been urged on public attention. No cure is considered with an accurate mind until the evil has become too sharp to be borne, or its whole force and might brought irresistibly before the world by its more ardent, penetrative, and indomitable spirits.’

That is but to say that a reformer with a genius for politics will sometimes deliberately resolve to do for a nation what otherwise could be done only by a sudden calamity too sharp to be borne. He determines to make himself unbearable. He hammers away at one point, and keeps himself before the public in a way that may well offend the sensibilities of the Anti-noise Society.

Those who do not know what he is driving at naturally think of him as a robustious fellow who seeks ‘to split the ears of the groundlings,’while he ‘makes the judicious grieve.' But the analogy drawn from the theatre is misleading. He is not an actor seeking applause, he is a social engineer intent on developing power for a particular purpose. If the groundlings have the power, he directs his attention to them. As for the judicious, they will grieve anyway. They will get over it when they have time to see what it is all about.

A leader must not be too modest to lead. He must have some way of apprising his followers of his whereabouts. This is not for the satisfaction of personal vanity, but to accomplish results.

I can imagine Robin Hood saying politely to the Sheriff of Nottingham, ‘ My Lord Sheriff, you must pardon me for blowing my own horn. I assure you that I did not do it to draw your attention to myself. When I saw you riding through the forest, so well attended, my one desire was to be selfeffacing. I would not wittingly have intruded my poor presence upon such a gallant company. But since this was not to be, I should like to present some stout gentlemen of my acquaintance who are more worthy than I of your lordship’s attention. Ah! here they come skipping o’er the lea!'

In the higher ranges of politics, selfassertion, instead of implying egotism, indicates self-absorption in a great work. Cobden, when he was making a moral issue of the repeal of the Corn Laws, said, ‘The only way in which the soul of a great nation can be stirred is by appealing to its sympathies with a true principle in its unalloyed simplicity. Nay, further, it is necessary for the concentration of a people’s mind that an individual should be the incarnation of a principle.'

Here we come upon ground unknown to the politicaster. He who aspires to play politics in this heroic fashion must be above all paltry subterfuges. To incarnate a great, popular principle, a man must have not only keen intelligence, but also a large heart and a vivid imagination. He must be a man of the people, and idealize the people. ‘Here is that which moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars.’

He cannot understand it by putting ‘his ear to the ground.' He must himself have a massive simplicity of character, and be moved by the same forces. He must be not only intellectually, but actually, a representative man.

One who would represent a commonwealth must realize what a commonwealth is. Let us take Milton’s conception of it as ‘a huge Christian personage, as compact of virtue as of body, the growth and stature of an honest man.’ It may be objected that this is an ideal, and that the actual commonwealth may be neither Christian nor compactly virtuous. Leaving out, then, that which is qualitative, let us fix our minds on that which is quantitative. A commonwealth may not be more virtuous than an individual, but it is certainly bigger. If we conceive of it as a personage, we must think of it as a huge personage. It requires an effort of the imagination to comprehend it. A nation may commit great sins and be greatly punished, but it should not be charged with petty larcenies. The querulous critic who scolds it as he would a spoiled child, has not learned the primer of politics.

A commonwealth is not only big, but, at least in relation to its own citizens, it must be thought of as honest. This follows from its bigness. Dishonesty is the attempt of a part to obtain what belongs to another part or to the whole. But it is hard to conceive of the whole as engaged in a deliberate robbery, for it has no one to rob but itself, and it must rob itself for its own benefit. The self-interest of a commonwealth is but interest in the common weal, and against this there is no law.

We may think of a commonwealth as a huge and honest personage who means well, but who has never made himself fully articulate. He manifests his more permanent ideas in laws and customs and social usages; but in dealing with the events of the passing hour, he must employ interpreters.

Like Belshazzar, he has his soothsayers, and Chaldeans, and magicians to interpret his dreams. They have long been with him, and are skilled in reading his habitual thoughts. But sometimes it happens that the huge personage has a new dream and has forgotten what it was. Then he calls his soothsayers, but the wise men only shake their heads. If he will kindly describe his dream they will tell him what it means. Which learned indecision makes t he huge personage very angry. So he seeks out some one who has dreams of his own, whose sold has been stirred by vague forebodings of impending change.

Happy is the nation which in time of perplexity can find an interpreter who not only can read the handwriting on the wall, but can also see a way out. The old order, he says, changes; but if we act resolutely we may have part in t he new order. It is a time when quick intelligence and courage point out the only safe courses.

The hero in politics is one who has convinced the people that he possesses this higher prudence. They recognize him when he separates himself from the crowd of petty politicians, by sacrificing a small advantage that he may seize a large opportunity. He is the man they were looking for, they hail him leader, for he is the one who ‘all alone stands hugely politic.’ The master-strokes of policy have been made by such men. With popular sentiment behind them, they have been able to overturn the best-laid plans of those who have grown gray in the work of political manipulation.

But is not this hero-worship dangerous? Yes, all heroic exaltation is dangerous, but the danger is not to the hero-worshipers, but to the hero.

Those who are tremulous about the fate of the Republic have a distressing notion that free nations have often perished because some great citizen has been too much admired and trusted. The idea is that an innocent nation may be betrayed by its affections. It loves not wisely but too well. It trusts the fond professions of a friend of the people who betrays the confidence that he has gained, and straightway turns tyrant.

One hates to disturb such a pretty sentimental theory; but I have to confess to a great skepticism when I hear this lover’s complaint. Nations ‘have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love.’ Nations have frequently tired of freedom and yielded themselves to tyrants, but not because of guileless trust in false professions. The tyrants did not gain their power by first inspiring the people with a love of liberty, and then suddenly using that power to enslave them.

Of course, we must expect to hear of Cæsar and Cromwell and Napoleon; they are always with us when we are asked to view with alarm any one whom the people delight to honor. But when we look more closely at these formidable personages, we find a singular consistency in their characters and careers. They deceived nobody, least of all their contemporaries. Had Cato crossed the Rubicon, or Hampden driven out the Parliament, or Mirabeau proclaimed himself Emperor, we might have a clear case of breach of promise. But Cæsar and Cromwell and Napoleon did what might reasonably have been expected. In each case the hour had struck when the Man of the Hour arrived to do the work which awaited. People at the time were looking for just such a man as he.

But who believes that Washington, had he been capable of yielding to a foolish ambition, could have used the love and reverence of his countrymen to make him king? The proverbial complaint of the ingratitude of republics is an indication that popular enthusiasm is not primarily for a person but for a cause. So long as the person and the cause are associated, they share alike in the loyalty that has been awakened. But when they are disassociated, the person shrinks. The Irish people idolized Daniel O’Connell. But suppose at the height of his power over the affections of the people O’Connell had renounced the cause of Ireland. Instantly the figure of the Liberator would have vanished into thin air. The ‘great’ man who treats his greatness as if it were a private possession is speedily disillusioned by a change of fortune. His grandiose schemes come to naught, for, in Milton’s sonorous phrase, he ‘has rambled in the huge topography of his own vain thoughts.’

The fact is that there is no device for a referendum that can express more accurately the exact shadings of the popular will than the admiration for a great man. It is effective only so long as it is spontaneous. It is a popular initiative that is always safeguarded by the possibility of an immediate recall.

Here is a man after the people’s own heart. He represents qualities which they share. He has won their confidence by doing in a conspicuous manner work which they believe ought to be done. Their power is behind him. But what if, once in the Seat of the Mighty, he decides to use his power for ends that they do not approve? All that we can say is that he has made a political blunder. He has forgotten that in a democracy the Seat of the Mighty is the Siege Perilous. The man through whose personality is expressed the aspiration of a great people is no longer his own master. He must be what people think he is, or he is undone. The Lost Leader is deemed a traitor, and yet his only treason is to the ideal which he has created in the minds of others.

To achieve a great reputation is to have an increase of power, but it is power moving only in one direction. The great man is swept along in the atmospheric currents of popular expectation. No one has yet invented a dirigible reputation.

When William Pitt accepted a peerage, he did only the usual thing. But he had forgotten the secret of his own power. Pitt was the great Commoner. Amid the welter of sordid interests he stood as the symbol of proud incorruptibility. When he became Lord Chatham, men seemed to hear the mocking cry of aristocratic placemen, ‘He hath become one of us.’

Webster, in his speech of the 7th of March, 1850, made a plea for a compromise to save the Union, which was looked upon by his fellow senators as thoroughly statesmanlike. But from thousands of his followers who had most idealized him, and to whom he had been almost a demigod, came the bitter cry, ‘Ichabod, the glory hath departed.’

So far from its being an easy thing for a popular politician to use his popularity according to his own wish, it is difficult to direct it in any way whatever. Political strategy differs from military strategy in that there can be no concealment, in regard to the objective. If the leader conceals his intentions, his followers become suspicious and desert him. The strategic retreat or the change of base is, therefore, a hazardous operation. Fabius, had he been in politics instead of war, would have found it well-nigh impossible to keep his forces together.

The skill of a great politician consists not in the ability to outwit his opponents, but in his ability to keep in check his more impetuous partisans without cooling their moral ardor. He must insist on doing one thing at a time, and yet so win their confidence that they shall believe that when that thing has been done he may be depended upon to take with equal courage the next necessary step. When he acts with prudence, he must see to it that his prudence is not mistaken for cowardice or sloth.

It was in his power of sun-clear exposition that Lincoln was preëminent. In his letter to Horace Greeley in 1862 he expounded his principles of political expediency in a way that could be ‘understanded of the people.’ ‘My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I believe that what I am doing hurts the cause. I shall do more whenever I believe that doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors: and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.’

Here two things are made perfectly clear, the personal wish and the official duty. Abraham Lincoln, the man, wished every man everywhere to be free: let friend and foe alike be aware of this. But Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, had a task to which everything else must be subordinated. His sworn duty was to save the Union, and no ulterior desire could be allowed to interfere with that. To save the Union he needed the help of those who believed in the immediate abolition of slavery, and he needed the help of those who did not so believe. And he was able to receive the help of both, because he took both into his full confidence.

The tragic blunders of the era of reconstruction came from the lack of such magnanimous politics. Lincoln would have made no mystery of the duty of the day, and he would have made it clear that it was a new day. He would have called upon the men of the South and the men of the North to lay aside their animosities as things irrelevant, in order together to save their common country from new perils. It took the ordinary politician a quarter of a century to see what the great politician could see in an instant, — that the Civil War was over. What miseries were endured, and what injustices were done, because well-intentioned leaders lacked the quality of moral quick-wittedness!

If war is the game of kings, politics is the game of free peoples. There is no form of human activity which calls into play so many qualities at once, or which demands the constant exercise of such energetic virtue.

‘Like a poet hidden in the light of thought,’the politician’s private conscience is hidden in the light of his public duty. He is himself a poet — a maker. He works not through words, but through the impulses and convictions of other men. His materials are the most ordinary — the events of the passing day, and the crude averages of unselected humanity. He takes them as they come, and remoulds them nearer to the heart’s desire. Out of the conflicting aims of the multitudes of individuals, he creates the harmonies of concerted action.

To some the praise of politicians may seem but the glorification of worldly success. ‘But what,’they ask, ‘about the failures? The world acclaims the hero who marches to triumph at the head of a great people. But what of one who is far in advance of his own time, the lonely champion of unpopular truth who dies unrecognized by the world he serves?’

The answer must be that there are good and great men whom we praise for other qualities than those of the politician. Their high function it is to proclaim ideas that are not affected by the changing circumstances of their own day. They belong to the ages, and not to a single generation. Their fame is dateless.

But, on the other hand, we must recognize the fact that one may be in advance of his age and yet closely related to it, as an effective politician. The politician aims at success, but it is not necessary that the success should be personal. It is the final issue of the struggle which must be kept in mind.

The politician is quick to seize an opportunity, but it may be only the opportunity to make a beginning in a work so vast that it cannot be completed in his own lifetime. He may deliberately ally himself to the party of the future, and labor to-day for results that cannot, appear till day after to-morrow. He may see that the surest way to the attainment of his ultimate purpose is through the ruins of his own fortunes, and he may choose to take that way.

In all this he is still within the range of practical politics, and is concerned with the adaptation of means to ends. He is dealing with the issues not of a day, but of a century. It is not safe to say that a politician has failed till the returns are all in.

As the true sequence of events becomes plain, History revises our judgments in regard to political sagacity. We begin to see who were the leaders, and who were the blindly led.

There have been martyrs who in the hour of their agony have been farseeing politicians. They have been sustained not so much by a beatific vision as by their clear foresight of the public consequences of the blunder of their adversaries. They have calculated the force of the revulsion of feeling that was sure to follow an act of cruel injustice. It was in this mood that heroic Hugh Latimer watched the fagots that were being piled around him. ‘Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England, as I trust shall never be put out.'

Latimer’s words were justified by the events. Those martyr fires, manfully endured, determined the policy of the nation.

Here good politics and good ethics are one. No cause has ever triumphed through clever management alone. There is always need for the leader, who, without regard to what may happen to himself, is resolved to play the man.