A Warning: "A corrupt republic is tainted in its blood, and bears the seeds of death in every pulsation."-- 1857

Noted in Life and liberty in America: or SKETCHES OF A TOUR IN THE UNITED STATES AND
CANADA IN 1857-8:

"But a greater danger even than this—the most formidable of all the rocks that are ahead—is the growth of peculation and corruption, and the decay of public virtue.

"A republic is, theoretically, the purest and most perfect form of government, but it requires eminently pure men to work it. A corrupt monarchy or despotism may last for a long time without fatal results to the body politic, just as a man may live a long time, and be a very satisfactory citizen, with only one arm, one leg, or one eye. In despotic countries the people may be virtuous though the government is vicious; but a corrupt republic is tainted in its blood, and bears the seeds of death in every pulsation.

"And on this point Mr. Buchanan seems to have a clearer vision than many of his countrymen. The presidential chair, like the tripod of the Pythoness, gives an insight into things. He knows by the daily and hourly solicitations of political mendicancy—by the clerkship demanded for this man's son or that man's cousin—by the consulship required for this brawler at a meeting, and the embassadorship to London or Paris, or a place in the ministry claimed by this indomitable partisan or that indefatigable knocker and ringer at the door of promotion, how corrupt are the agencies at work.

"He knows, too, what personal humiliation he himself had to undergo before reaching the White House, and which he must daily suffer if he would please his party. He knows, as every President must know, no matter who or what he is, or what his antecedents may have been, what a vast amount of venality has to be conciliated and paid, one way or another, before the hungry maw of Universal Suffrage can be fed and satisfied, and the wheels of the great car of the republic be sufficiently greased.

"In reference to this fever in the blood of the state, he thus solemnly warns the citizens in the letter from which quotation has already been made:

"I shall assume the privilege of advancing years in reference to another growing and dangerous evil. In the last age, although our fathers, like ourselves, were divided into political parties which often had severe conflicts with each other, yet we never heard until within a recent period of the employment of money to carry elections. Should this practice increase until the voters and their representatives in the state and national Legislatures shall become infected, the fountain of free government will be poisoned at its source, and we must end, as history proves, in a military despotism. A democratic republic, all agree, can not long survive unless sustained by public virtue. When this is corrupted, and the people become venal, there is a canker at the root of the tree of liberty which will cause it to wither and to die."

Posted by Vanderleun at June 10, 2011 2:43 AM