Politicians had tacitly given it up. Grant's administration
marked the avowal. Nine-tenths of men's political energies must
henceforth be wasted on expedients to piece out -- to patch --
or, in vulgar language, to tinker -- the political machine as
often as it broke down. Such a system, or want of system, might
last centuries, if tempered by an occasional revolution or civil
war; but as a machine, it was, or soon would be, the poorest in
the world -- the clumsiest -- the most inefficient
Here again was an education, but what it was worth he could not
guess. Indeed, when he raised his eyes to the loftiest and most
triumphant results of politics -- to Mr. Boutwell, Mr. Conkling
or even Mr. Sumner -- he could not honestly say that such an
education, even when it carried one up to these unattainable
heights, was worth anything. There were men, as yet standing on
lower levels -- clever and amusing men like Garfield and Blaine
-- who took no little pleasure in making fun of the senatorial
demi-gods, and who used language about Grant himself which the
North American Review would not have admitted. One asked
doubtfully what was likely to become of these men in their turn.
What kind of political ambition was to result from this
destructive political education?
Yet the sum of political life was, or should have been, the
attainment of a working political system.
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