ive into elective offices. The powers of the gov ernor were reduced by converting local agencies of government into elective offices. Heads of state departments, that had been appointed by the governor or by the legislature, were also cut loose to be filled under the form of popular election. Even the judiciary did not escape, and in most of the states the office of judge was abandoned to party politics by making it elective. The practical effect of the change was to convert a system of responsible appointment into a system of irresponsible appointment. It is obviously impossible for the people to select officers for innumerable places except by some means of agreement and coöperation, which means is ordinarily supplied by the activity of the political class. It may be laid down as a political maxim, that whatever assigns to the people a power which they are naturally incapable of wielding takes it away from them. It may be argued that this principle carried to its logical conclusion implies that the people are unable to select their own rulers in any case. This is perfectly true. The actual selection will be always made by the few, no matter how many may seem to participate. The only value of popular elections is to establish accountability to the people, but this rightly used is quite enough to constitute a free government.

The multiplication of elective offices and the distribution of the responsibilities of government

It

among independent authorities, dissipates accountability so that practically it ceases to exist. puzzles foreign observers to understand how any public responsibility can be enforced under such a system.

Mr. Bryce remarks: "Will not a scheme, in which the executive officers are all independent of one another, yet not subject to the legislature, want every condition needed for harmonious and efficient action? They obey nobody. They are responsible to nobody, except a people which only exists in concrete activity for one election day every two years, when it is dropping papers into the ballot-box. Such a system seems the negation of a system, and more akin to chaos." The explanation of this mystery is that the scattered powers of government are resumed by party organization, and this concentration of power carries with it a public responsibility which may be enforced. The soundness of the popular instinct on this point is shown by the indifference of voters to the personal merits of candidates, when moved by resentment against party organization. One of the peculiarities of the great revulsions of feeling, which have obtained the name of "tidal-waves," is the way in which they toss into prominence, grotesque nonentities and incapables who never could have obtained important office by the ordinary gradation of political preferment.

1 American Commonwealth, Vol. I., p. 530.

The interdependence of political interests is such that local transactions cannot be separated from state and national concerns. If the party is hurt anywhere, it feels it everywhere.1 Needs of adjustment between local and general political interests have thus been created, which have gradually evolved a hierarchy of political control, with respective rights and privileges that are tenaciously insisted upon. In this respect party organization curiously resembles feudalism. The city boss and the state boss are the grand feudatories of the system. The city boss is the nexus of municipal administration, —a centre of control outside of the partitions of authority which public prejudice and traditional opinion insist upon in the formal constitution of city government. The boss system is enormously expensive, but so great is the value of concentrated authority in business management that one may hear it said among practical men of affairs that a city needs a political boss in order to be progressive. The fact is well known that it was due to authority of this kind that the national capital was transformed from an area of swamps and mud-banks into the beautiful city it is now. The state boss is the

1 At the New York City election of 1897, the Low movement confined itself to local purposes, and offered its adherents no candidate for the state office voted for at the same election. As a result, 67,677 votes that were cast for local candidates were not cast at all for judge of the Court of Appeals.

natural complement of the situation produced by the dissolution of executive authority in state government. The office restores outside of the formal constitution what is lost inside of itefficient control. In the national government no such dissolution having taken place, the case is different. There is no national boss but the President, and that is what the people put him there to be. If he does not boss the situation, he is a political failure, no matter what else he may be.

Thus by a perfectly natural process of evolution, the structure and functions of party organization have been elaborated, so as to comprehend the political activity of American citizenship from the minutest subdivision of local government up to the formation of a national administration. Party organization selects candidates for innumerable offices; it superintends the perpetual succession of elections; its operation is continuous. Since politics in all their gradations have their connections with trade and society, the activities of politics permeate the whole sphere of civic life.

The community of interest thus established causes party organization to exercise a moderating influence of immense importance. When the convention system was established, its direct appeal to the people, followed by numerous massmeetings and floods of oratory, excited a violence of party feeling that horrified statesmen of the

old school.

"Here is a revolution in the habits and manners of the people," wrote John Quincy Adams in his diary. "These meetings cannot be multiplied in number and frequency without resulting in deeper tragedies. Their manifest tendency is to civil war."1 Calhoun had no doubt that "the appeal to force will be made whenever the violence of the struggle and the corruption of parties will no longer submit to the decision of the ballot-box." 2

But history plainly shows that party spirit has not had any such tendency. On the contrary, party organization long repressed the operation of the forces which did indeed eventually produce civil war. Before the slavery question could be brought to the front as the decisive issue of national politics, an entirely new and purely sectional party had to be formed. National party organization held the Union together long after the South had become at heart a separate nation, from the distinct interests and purposes developed by slavery. As early as the forties, great religious denominations split into Northern and Southern divisions. Calhoun, in his last speech, called attention to the manner in which tie after tie was snapping. But still party organization continued to bear the strain, and it was the last bond of union to give way. Then war or disunion became inevi

1 Memoirs, Vol. X., p. 352.

2 Calhoun's Works, Vol. I., pp. 378, 379.