Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/83

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY 69

the party's principles, and in so doing they have forced the con- stitution to their necessities. This is shown notoriously in the election of the president on a party ticket, instead of the election of a non-partisan, like George Washington, as contemplated in the constitution. It is shown also in the appointment of the sub- ordinate civil-service officials in nation, state, and city, on the basis of partisan activity, a policy of appointment introduced by those early inventors of the political machine, George Clinton in New York and Andrew Jackson in the union. This policy has greatly strengthened party organization by enabling the party leaders to reward and punish the party workers by substantial privileges and revenues, and so to hold together between elections and fortify themselves in their supremacy over the government and over their own partisans.

This centralizing tendency in party government was resisted by the American voters in the same way that centralization in national government has been resisted, by the formation of people's clubs in localities, meeting together to criticise and take independent action against their leaders. These local clubs gradually compelled recognition and secured, as the authorita- tive organ of the party, the substitution of the party nominating convention composed of their own delegates, instead of the legislative or congressional caucus of party leaders. Thus the primaries originated. They tended to socialize the parties and to give voice to the wishes of the party membership as a whole. They thereby greatly strengthened the party organization, not by lessening the power of leadership, but by reconciling the members to the leadership of those whom they believed to have been fairly chosen.

With the completed recognition of the primary in the first thirty-five years of this century, party government came to be firmly established in the hearts of the people. The increase ot power coming from it led the parties to seize upon the machinery of the government, the subordinate offices, and the laws, to keep themselves in power. It now became necessary for the opposing parties in self-protection to use legislation to hold each other in check. Consequently the first legal cognizance of parties appears