party was not comprehended by him. The party spirit during his administration and the bitterness of the party recriminations with those in his own official family actually employing pamphleteers to attack their political opponents reminds one of the party strife during the reigns of William and Anne. In fact, party spirit so alarmed Washington that in his Farewell Address he thus warned his countrymen:

The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government. All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberations of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency.

And yet, within a generation after Washington's Farewell • Address, it was a well-recognized practice to form associations with the design to control "the regular deliberations of the constituted authorities," for we must remember that one of those "constituted authorities" was the electoral college, and within less than thirty years elaborate party associations, reaching down into all the voting districts of the land, allowed the people to make of the electoral college only a recording mechanism.

Party machinery in our early national period took its origins from pre-Revolutionary caucuses in the colonial towns.1 County conventions also developed in the latter part of the

1 John Adams thus mentions an early caucus in pre-Revolutionary Boston: Boston. February. This day learned that the Caucus Club meets, at certain times, in the garret of Tom Dawes, the Adjutant of the Boston Regulars. He has a large house, and he has a movable partition in his garret which he takes down, and the whole club meets in one room. There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one end of the garret to the other. There they drink flip, I suppose, and there they choose a moderator, who puts questions to the vote regularly; and selectmen, assessors, collectors, wardens, firewards, and representatives, are regularly chosen before they are chosen in the town. Uncle Fairfield, Story, Ruddock, Adams, Cooper and a rudis indigestaque moles of others are members. They send committees to wait on the merchant's club, and to propose and join in the choice of men and measures. Captain Cunningham says, they have often solicited him to go to those caucuses, they have assured him benefits in his business, etc. (The Works of John Adams, edited by C. F. Adams, Boston, Little and Brown, 1850. Vol. II, p. 144.)

18th century. When it became necessary to organize state and national governments some form of party organization of such scope was rendered essential. The legislative caucus first supplied this need. The legislators were usually prominent men from all sections of the political community and represented the parties in the legislature. Owing to the difficulty of travel in those days it was a great convenience to have a group of party men from all sections of the state or country assembled in some central place. The legislative caucus naturally became the nominating convention and the one fairly permanent party organization and committee. In its federal form this was known as the Congressional Caucus, and it controlled the nominations for president from 1804 to 1824.

On account of the fact that parties were looked upon as extra-legal and extraneous bodies of sinister potency at this time being in fact literally outlaws the central organization of the parties -the caucus-was, naturally, severely criticized. It was hailed as "King Caucus" and the deposition of this usurping monarch was eagerly sought. It is not surprising, however, that most of the criticism of the caucus came from those who felt that they were losing thereby. Those who felt well satisfied with its results regarded it as simply a necessary evil essential to the operation of the party system at the time.1

• The destruction of the Congressional Caucus as a factor in national politics was accomplished as a part of the democratic1 Professor McMaster thus summarizes the argument set forth by those who favored the caucus system: "We deprecate the caucus method of nomination. We admit that it has much the appearance of an unwarrantable assumption of the rights of the people. But it is not. The congressmen meet as citizens, acting in the interests of union and harmony, single out one man and bring him to the attention of the electors. The electors are not bound, though they are asked, to support him. They are quite at liberty to choose some one else. The caucus-system, moreover, has grown out of the nature of our free institutions. In a country where all are free to nominate, this piece of political machinery is necessary, in order to prevent a dozen men being put in nomination and defeat thus assured. Only when the people waver in their choice does the caucus become dangerous." J. B. McMaster, History of the People of the United States, Vol. IV, p. 365.)

frontier wave which brought Andrew Jackson to the presidency. Jackson believed himself at a disadvantage with the politicians who controlled the caucus. He and many of his followers were enraged by the contested election for president in 1824, as a result of which Jackson believed that he had been cheated out of the presidency. He and his supporters began a thorough-going attack upon the congressional control of the party nominating system. By the time of the campaign of 1828 the caucus had disappeared, and, by 1832, the national nominating convention had appeared in its place. The first national nominating convention was that of the Anti-Masonic party which met in Baltimore in 1831 and nominated William Wirt as its candidate for president. The Whigs met in convention later in the year and nominated Clay, and the next spring the Democrats followed and nominated Jackson. The convention system, existing along with the so-called local caucus," was soon adopted in the many subdivisions of the government for the purpose of nominating candidates for lesser offices. Along with this came the development of permanent national, state and county committees to look after party interests in the intervals between the assembling of the periodic nominating conventions.

The effect of this constant co-operation in party management between men in different parts of the country had a most important effect in welding the country together. Men in widely separated localities were learning to work together. The men of New England, of the South, and of the frontier were learning to know one another. Moreover, in the fine phrase of Burke, they were securing "hard essays of practiced friendship and experimented fidelity." And, whether they fully knew it or not, they were actually proving "that friendship was no mean step toward patriotism; that he who in the common intercourse of life showed that he regarded somebody beside himself, when he came to act in a public situation might probably consult some other interest than his

1

1 Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, in Works, Vol. I, p. 425.

own.' Professor Allen Johnson has well pointed out the importance of all this in the making of the new nation and delaying the Civil War: "Party was the last bond between slaveholding and non-slaveholding States. Party ties held long after social institutions had broken asunder. The Methodist church split in 1844; the Baptist church in 1845. The first of the great parties to lose its coherence, the Whig, was practically intact until the election of 1852. The Democratic party maintained a national organization until 1860. It is highly significant that religious institutions which stood for Christian brotherhood should have been unable to maintain their integrity, while political parties with no such inner, cohesive force should have held together."

• As the parties developed strength and coherent organization their abuses likewise increased. Offices began to multiply and it became common to distribute them as rewards for party activity. Bribery, corruption and graft became not uncommon. This led to the establishment of various forms of state control over parties. The secret or Australian ballot was introduced gradually after 1880. The Pendleton Civil Service Law, passed by Congress in 1883, and a body of civil service laws adopted in various States were directed to the correction of the abuses incident to uncontrolled party domination of offices. Primary laws, designed to break down the control of nominations by a narrow group of politicians, were enacted, beginning with the California law of 1866 and the Ohio law of 1871. But the active period of primary legislation came with the opening of the 20th century. It is too early properly to balance the good and evil results of the direct primary system. For our present purpose it is important, however, to note that the effect of the modern legislation is to deprive the party of its extra-legal character. Party may have gained the advantage of being taken out of the outlaw class, but has it not lost the advantage of flexibility

1 Burke, Ibid., p. 424.

2 Allen Johnson, "The Nationalizing Influence of Party," in The Yale Review, November, 1906.

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in organization? Has not the growing confinement of party to rigid legal forms put some obstacles in the way of the formation of new parties? Effort formerly directed to the making of a new party may hereafter be spent in endeavoring to capture one of the old parties. The result has been somewhat to confuse party aims.

If one would fully appreciate the great change that the modern political party has made in government he must compare the ordinary processes of government today with the methods of government two or three centuries ago. It is very easy to point to abuses of party government, but the fair test is to compare its contemporary abuses with the evils which existed under the prevailing modes of government before party government came in with the adoption of representative and democratic institutions. We lose entirely the meaning of party government unless we look upon it as one step and by no means the final one

in that long and

difficult problem of organization with which men have been concerned ever since they began to live together in political societies. Two hundred and fifty years is a very short period in the history of civilization. It may help to realize how short a period it is if we adopt Professor Robinson's vivid clock illustration.' He assumes that the anthropologists are correct when they tell us that man has walked erect upon this earth for more than two hundred and forty thousand years. If the origins of that remote period be counted the beginning of our day, and the present time be counted high noon, then at about twenty minutes before twelve there appeared the beginnings of Egyptian and Babylonian civilization. At about one and one quarter minutes before twelve, the printing press was invented and the basis was laid by which learning was to be democratized. About forty seconds before our noon man began to use the modern political party in order to govern himself and his neighbors. It has been utilized for a very short period, and yet, with all its evils, it has brought mighty changes in the methods of government. With all its im

1 J. H. Robinson, The New History, p. 239.