"Party, party, party! A man would rather commit a crime than vote against
his party. The evil runs through the country from East to West, from North
to South, eating at the nation's heartstrings, gnawing at her sinews, and
undermining her strength. The time is coming, is even now come, when two
or three parties no longer suffice to express the disunion of the Union.
There are three to-day: to-morrow there will be five, the next day ten,
twenty, a hundred, till every man's hand is against his fellow, and his
fellow's against him. The divisions have grown so wide that the majority
and the minority are but the extremities of a countless set of internecine
majorities and minorities.
"Members of parties are bound no longer by the honest determination to do
the right, to choose the right, and to uphold the right--they are bound by
fearful penalties to support their own man, were he the very chiefest
outcast of the earth, lest the man of another party be elected in his
place. The adverse candidate is perhaps avowedly better fitted for the
office, a hundred times more honest, more experienced, more worthy of
respect.
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