“While many a page of bard and sage Deemed once the world’s immortal gain Lost from Time’s ark, leaves no more mark Than Conkling, Cameron, or Blaine.”
It was in the late summer and early fall of 1876, also, when the political fight was hottest, that Lowell peppered the enemy with the half-dozen epigrams of which he preserved only one, “A Misconception.” The allusions in some were to passing incidents, so that footnotes to his two-line epigrams would now be needed. Some with good memory will need no key to unlock this:--
Where currency’s debased, all coins will pass. Ask you for proof? The Widow’s might is brass.
But the most definite public expression of his political thought at this time may be found in the draft of a speech at a caucus in Cambridge which Lowell preserved among his papers. Apparently Lowell wrote this out in advance, but it is not likely that he imported into a political caucus the very academic method of reading a speech.
“I do not propose,” he says, “to make a speech. Still less shall I try to captivate your ears or win your applauses by any of those appeals to passion and prejudice which are so tempting and so unwise. Politics are the most serious of all human affairs, and I prefer the approval of your understandings to that of your hands and feet.
“The presidential contest of this year is in some respects unlike any other that I remember. Both parties claim to be in favor of the same reforms in our currency and our civil service, and both have nominated men of character and ability for the highest office in our government. Meanwhile there is a much larger class of voters than usual who are resolved to cast their ballots less in reference to party ties than to what in their judgment is the interest of the whole country. The two parties are so evenly balanced that the action of this class is of supreme importance. Among these are doubtless some wrongheaded men, some disappointed ones, and some who think that any change, no matter what, may be for the better and cannot be for the worse. But in general these dissatisfied persons are men of more than average thoughtfulness, weight of character, and influence. They feel profoundly that the great weakness of the democratical form of government, as they have studied its workings in this country, is a great and growing want of responsibility in officials, whether to the head of the government or to the country, a great and growing indifference (in the selection of candidates) to the claims of character as compared with those of partisan efficiency or unscrupulousness. We hear, to be sure, of responsibility to the People, but in practice this amounts to very little. Just before election the politicians become tenderly aware of the existence of the People, they recognize their long lost brother, and rush into his arms with more than fraternal fervor. In the same way, just before the 17th of March they show a surprising familiarity with the history of St. Patrick, though at other times we should hardly suspect that their favorite study was the lives of the saints. During the rest of the year the people are busy about their own affairs, and have neither the leisure nor the inclination to be scrutinizing the conduct of their public servants. A responsibility to many is practically a responsibility to none. Now you all know that in battling with the cankerworm, it is around the stem of the tree that we apply our preventives, because that is the highway by which the grubs climb to lay their eggs. The eggs once laid there is no remedy. The stem by which our political grubs have gone up to deposit the germs of devastation has been our primary meetings and conventions, the adroit management of which has too often given us candidates without that self-respect which makes men responsible to their own conscience, and without that respect for the better sentiment of the country which might spring from the fear of lost repute and diminished consideration. They fear no loss of what they never had. The discontented class of which I have spoken are resolved to make candidates feel their responsibility at the polls, the only point at which they are sensitive. I confess that I share largely in the feeling that leads them to this determination.