ingenius, the second beautiful, the third abominably clever." "The Importance of Being Earnest," indeed, all of Wilde's comedies, indubitably testify, in the language of Truth, to the importance of being Oscar!

"To be free," wrote a celebrity, "one must not conform." Wilde secured freedom in the drama through refusing to conform to the laws of dramatic art. He claimed the privileges without shouldering the responsibilities of the dramatist. He imported the methods of the causerie into the domain of the drama, and turned the theater into a house of mirth. Whether or no his destination was the palace of truth, certain it is that he always stopped at the half-way house. Art was the dominant note of his literary life; but it was not the art of drama, but the art of conversation. He made many

delightful, many pertinent observations upon English life, and upon life in general; but they had no special relation to the dramatic theme he happened for the moment to have in mind. His plays live in and for the sake of the moment, neither enlarging the mental horizon nor dilating the heart. Wilde was too selfcentered an individualist ever to come into any real or vital relation with life. It was his primal distinction as artist to be consumed with a passionate love of Art. It was his primal deficiency as artist to have no genuine sympathy with humanity. And although he imaged life with clearness and distinction, certain it is that he never saw life steadily, nor even saw it whole.

ARCHIBALD HENDERSON.

Chapel Hill, N. C.

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MONG the sinister forces which from the establishment of our government worked for its destruction, none has been more potent for evil than the spirit of partisanship.

To its tendency and capacity for disintegration of the governmental fabric, altogether too little importance has been attached.

Even disinterested publicists and patriotic disciples of altruistic republicanism, studying zealously the promotion of the common weal as the highest duty of good citizenship, have apparently minimized its significance.

The advocates of civil-service reform have barely ruffled the surface of the pool of this iniquity. Their efforts have been directed wisely and well in theory, and with a considerable measure of prudence

holder nor a seeker of office. And the measure of its baleful damage to the aggregate body politic is necessarily the proper mutliple of its corrupting influence upon the individual voter.

The most signal, as it is the saddest, example of the awful power of the evil genius of party spirit, triumphing over the cause of true patriotism by dictating policies of governmental action that traverse every fundamental principle of those ideas of right and justice on which, as a constitution-limited democracy, this government was founded, stands displayed in that overthrow of the republic which, aimed at bluntly and with treasonable intent by Benedict Arnold in the eighteenth century, was consummated at the very dawn of the twentieth, under the administration of William McKinley, not only without conscious guilt of purpose but rather under the influence of what may be viewed most charitably as erroneously-guided though loyally-intended enthusiasm; and more discriminatingly as but another and, under the circumstances, possibly inevitable step in the deliberate program of centralization of power against which the republic was forced to contend from the days of Hamilton.

And the fact that Democrats must share with Republicans the shame of responsibility for this debasement of our system of government does not at all rob of effect the charge that, but for the tyranny of partisanship, there could never have been effectuated so disastrous a revolution from a practical, though not a pure democracy, to a hybrid, quasi-imperial, colony-holding government, which, preserving the form of a republic at home, became abroad a despotism unique among autocracies in that, to justify its policy of extermination or subjugation so absurdly misdefended as a program of benevolent assimilation, it became necessary to deny the universality of application of those very doctrines upon which were grounded at the outset the claims to its own right to existence as a federation of free and independent states.

Nay, farther. Party spirit may justly be held accountable for the facts that the apologists for our indefensible position under the Treaty of Paris have not only been under the necessity of so far repudiating the noble tenets of the Declaration of Independence-admittedly, for the sake of argument, a controversial document-as to declare its public circulation in our dependencies an act of treason, but have been compelled to negative both the theory and the state of facts upon which the United States proceeded in prosecuting its dispute against the Spanish crown for the relinquishment to the jurisdiction of this government of the several positions in the colony of Georgia held by the troops of Spain at the close of the Revolution.

That the volte-face thus completed as well regarding the principles as touching the practice of our own original claims to independent sovereignty may be attributed to the blind, unreasoning domination of partisan rancor, dictation and jealously is no less true than clear to the attentive student of the senatorial debates which preceded the final ratification of that treaty.

To the Republicans who voted for it, there appeared a clear necessity of supporting the administration in its committal of the nation to a novel and radical departure from the beliefs and customs of the fathers; while the Democrats were impelled to support ratification for the two-fold purpose of counteracting any political benefits that might accrue to their opponents therefrom by robbing it of the distinctive partisan character which it would have gained through enactment as a Republican measure, and of avoiding, in semblance at least, marked deviation from the historic Democratic policy of favoring the territorial expansion of the nation.

And so, by a most malign coalition of political antagonists, leagued only in an unholy alliance to prevent each the other from reaping purely partisan advantage, men of eminence and candor, like Sena

tors Hoar and Hale, who stood battling manfully for adhesion to right principles and just conduct, were ignominiously overcome. And with them went down the American Republic as it had stood from the day when its self-sacrificing and patriotic founders justified their secession from allegiance to King George by the solemn declaration that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are among the natural, inalienable rights of man, down through the period when the great emancipator was proclaiming the same doctrine in words like these:

"Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most vaiuable and a most sacred right."

A doctrine adhered to, fought for and preserved unimpaired until it became necessary to invoke the unknown gods of "manifest destiny" and a "higher law" than the rule of justice or the golden rule, to palliate the enormity of our unpardonable offense against liberty and the law of nations in making war upon confiding allies, to rivet upon their limbs the fetters of political as well as military subjugation.

And so in great, so in small matters, blighting to conscience, searing to the moral sense, is that false spirit of partisan advocacy which distorts and disfigures every man and measure identified with the political opposition and surrounds with an entirely illusory mirage of seeming splendor and worth the individuals and the policies of the devotee's own party.

Yet it is to-day a great, if not a predominating, influence, in political affairs necessarily to be reckoned with in the practical management of campaigns, and unfailingly relied upon by the organizers and managers of party movements. It constitutes the factor which enables "basses" of "machines" of whatever

stripe or faction, confidently to depend upon a certain measure of support, almost definitely calculable, for any proposition or program bearing the label of party endorsement. Selfishness is its dominant note; regularity, its shibboleth. And its mighty force is far more rarely exercised for purposes of righteousness than for those of iniquity.

This it is which gave to a revolutionary but temporarily dominant faction of the Democratic party the power to decree that blind adhesion to a false standard of value as the unit-base of our financial system should be the touchstone of party fealty, regardless of the fact that the new position of the organization involved a complete abandonment of its teachings and official declarations for almost a century.

This it is which has enabled the Republican party to make a fetich of the tariff, vaunting its selfish schedules as something well nigh sacred,-not, at least, to be touched by the hands of the profane and vulgar who advocate free trade in antagonism to that false-fronted doctrine of protection which nourishes monopolistic trusts and criminal corporate phantasms at the cost of grinding oppression of the producing toiler and price-robbery of the unprotected consumer.

And this it is which to-day protects that organization from open ridicule in its exaggerated pose as the sole advocate and supporter of the single gold standard, despite the somersault it has achieved from the position taken in its platform a few years ago when it was denouncing a Democratic President for his hostility to silver and his promulgation of that very doctrine to which it now gives unswerving adherence and for which it boastfully but illogically and untruthfully claims the credit of parentage.

Let me not be thought to exaggerate the evils of this sinister force in our politics. I have known numbers of Democrats who would regard the casting of a Republican ballot as ranking next only in baseness to an act of infidelity to their religious faith.

While numbers of Republicans have privately expressed to me their conviction that the bitter alliteration of Rev. Dr. Burchard, delivered with such blighting result upon the political fortunes of Mr. Blaine, to the effect that the Democracy was the party of rum, Romanism and rebellion, though tactically condemnable as an egregious blunder in political judgment, really expressed and defined with precision and justice their own private conception of the party. Within the year I was surprised to receive from an old veteran of long-standing acquaintance, to whom I addressed at the polls in a Maine city a friendly inquiry whether he were voting the Democratic ticket, an objurgatory reply to the effect that he should consider that he wasted four years of his life in fighting at the front if he were ever to cast a Democratic ballot or support a Democratic measure or candidate.

And the pity of it is that Americans were warned most authoritatively and it would almost seem prophetically against the evils of this bitter force from the very dawn of our national existence.

How nobly, in that wonderful, I had nearly written inspired, deliverance in which, couched in language of august dignity, of temperate earnestness, of mature wisdom, the illustrious Washington paid his farewell address to the people he had so faithfully served, are the evils of party spirit portrayed and its vicious influence warningly advertised. clarion-like ring the words:

How

mental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils, and modified by mutual interests.

"However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion. . . .

"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state. . . . Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you, in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

"This spirit, unfortunately, is inspearable from our nature, having its root 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 is it seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

"We alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetuated the most horrid enormities, is of itself a frightful despotism. But this leads, at length, to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and, sooner or

later, the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.

"Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which, nevertheless, ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

"There is an opinion that parties in free countries, are useful checks upon the administration of the Government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This, within certain limits, is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain that there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose."

And with what characteristic candor and cogency did Thomas Jefferson set out his rebuke of partisanship, in the brief limits of a single letter written from Paris to Hopkinson in which, in less than a score of sentences, he not only exposes its dangerous tendencies, but treats with clairvoyant prescience nearly every problem that has since developed into a stumbling block in the pathway of our constitutional progress.

Under date of March 13, 1789, he writes: "I am not a federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore, I protest to you, I am not of the party of federalists But I am much farther from that

of the anti-federalists. I approved, from the first moment, of the great mass of what is in the new constitution; the organization into executive, legislative, and judiciary; the sub-division of the legislative; the happy compromise of interests between the great and little States, by the different manner of voting in the different Houses; the voting by persons instead of States; the qualified negative on laws given to the executive, which, however, I should have liked better if associated with the judiciary also as in New York; and the power of taxation. . . . What I disapproved from the first moment, also, was the want of a bill of rights, to guard liberty against the legislative as well as executive branches of the government; that is to say, to secure freedom in religion, freedom of the press, freedom from monopolies, freedom from unlawful imprisonment, freedom from a permanent military, and a trial by jury, in all cases determinable by the law of the land. I disapproved also the perpetual reëligibility of the President. To these points of disapprobation I adhere. .. With respect to the declaration of rights, I suppose the majority of the United States are of my opinion; for I apprehend all the anti-federalists, and a very respectable proportion of the federalists think that such a declaration should now be annexed. The enlightened part of Europe have given us the greatest credit for inventing this instrument of security for the rights of the people, and have been not a little surprised to see us so soon give it up. With respect to the reëligibility of the President, I find myself differing from the majority of my countrymen.

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These, my dear friend, are my sentiments, by which you will see I was right in saying I am neither federalist nor anti-federalist; that I am of neither party nor yet a trimmer between parties.

Trumpet-toned as truth, solemn as surf-bells' warnings, pregnant with patriotic solicitude, on what dull ears have fallen these significant and serious ad