Book Description

Excerpt from The Defeat of Party Despotism Fellow-Citizens of the Reform Club: - In laying before you a plan for the defeat of party despotism I have the great advantage of being assured of your interest in the object proposed, and thus of being relieved of the burden of a large part of my argument. That party despotism exists, and is not much more tolerable for being nominally vested in two parties instead of one; and that it exists as a continual mischief and formidable peril to the commonwealth - these are propositions which, as a society for political reform, you will be ready to admit without protracted discussion. It is substantially true, and is growing every year to be more absolutely and exclusively true, that the American citizen is shut out from any effective share in political affairs, from municipal to national, except by virtue of his membership in, or his subserviency to, one of two great extra-constitutional and extra-legal organizations. Independently of his relation to one of these great combinations, the citizen is not only practically excluded from official functions, but even his freedom as a voter is narrowed down so near to the vanishing point that the exercise of the voter's franchise is getting to be more and more neglected, as an act merely formal and futile. And, to the great detriment of the republic and the degradation of its political life, this neglect of political duties tends to become more and more general among those classes of citizens who, by reason of superior intelligence and independence and conscientiousness of character, are the least likely to move in subserviency to the requirements of a party organization. There are simple souls, no doubt, who will consider all objections to the supreme domination of parties to be completely met by asking, What, after all, are parties, but the people themselves dividing naturally, according to the opinions or predilections of each individual, on important questions as they emerge? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.