Non-Partisan Advice

NON-PARTISAN ADVICE We shall soon be in the throes of a general election all over Canada the spirit of party will be excited and the spirit of party is an unclean spirit. Every effort will be made, every muscle strained by the two great political factions to ensure the triumph and dominance of the political creeds which they each follow. Scrupulousness of statements, of methods, of motives, will be for the time discarded and cast aside as unsuited to the needs of a political content. Every device known to the partisan newspaper fraternity- will be employed to misrepresent the utterances, belittle the popularity, and vilify the characters of political opponents. Facts favorable to the opposite party will be ignored or deliberately falsified, and the actual chances of success of either side will be discounted with scorn by their opponents. All this for the purpose of deceiving the electors and disgusting or discouraging them. The electors are after all the court of last resort, and every means must be employed to snatch a partisan victory from their decision. That is politics as our party journals understand them, and mean employment indeed it is, and suitable to venal pens. At the same time, with this crusade of journalistic mendacity and misrepresentation, a campaign of effective personal work is organized and carried on by the men who are hangers-on and party-heelers, and politicians on a small scale. In its employment of the meanest canvasses and its appeals to the innate mercenariness of humanity this campaign is, perhaps, on a still lower plane than that which the party journals are conducting. They have to work openly; their methods can be seen and examined, and the issues they raise fairly met; but there is no way to meet and overcome the labyrinthine crookedness of the political agent working in secrecy except by counterplotting of a similar mean character. There is thus induced at election times such a vitiation of the moral atmosphere of the community as must disgust every self-respecting man. In fact the evils attendant on party system are now so obvious and weigh so strongly on the public conscience that the fear is that politics will be left to the men who make a living by them, while the reputable portion of the community will, as in the United States, withdraw entirely from active participation in them. We may not indeed get that far, because the opportunities for public plunder will not for long years be so great it as in the United States, but we shall certainly have, and are having, our proportionate share of the evil. This acute danger of intense partisanship is a real danger to the warm-blooded Celt. It is difficult for him to take things in moderation. He is apt to believe that all is good on his side, and all unmitigated badness on the side opposed to him. He is not likely to stop and think, as he should, that as there are good people on the other side so there must be a fair amount of good in the principles of that side. Unmitigated badness is found nowhere above ground. Men are good and bad, but no party has a monopoly of either quality. All this is commonplace truth, we admit, but it is surprising how apt some people are to lose sight of the commonplace under stress of unusual excitement. It follows, therefore, that a deliberate respect for the political opinions of our fellow men should be entertained by all. If these opinions agree with yours, so much the better for you and the more encouraging to both; if they are opposed to y ours, you must bring yourself to realize that they are not on that account necessarily immoral or unpatriotic or even ill-founded. You have not the monopoly of political infallibility. Your neighbour may be brighter shrewder, better informed than you with a wider insight into issues and a calmer judgement to decide upon them. He is simply exercising the right of private judgement as to what is best for the country and this is one of the sacred prerogative of Canadian citizenship. He is protected in the enjoyment of the privilege of thinking for himself by the fundamental law of the country. Restrain, then the bumptiousness which might lead you to believe that in matters political you are the law and the prophets and your opinion the only one deserving of consideration.