Appealing to the People
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APPEALING TO THE PEOPLE.
The notoriety given to the Southern and Western practice of opposing candidates appealing to the people side by side in the same meeting, by the reports of the Douglas and Lincoln discussions in Illinois, is likely, we hope, to introduce the same practice in other sections of the country. We learn from the Jersey papers that ex-Gov. Pennington1 and Mr. Wortendyke2, the Opposition and Democratic candidates for Congress in Jersey city, intend stumping their district together; and the press of both parties approve the arrangement.
Any one who has attended a mass meeting of the adherents of a single party (and who has not?) knows how facts are perverted, and falsehoods and misrepresentations indulged in, which the speakers would not dare to utter, were they to be followed by an opponent who would detect and expose the fallacy. By going to meetings of his favorite party alone, the voter hears only one side of the question; and if, as many do, he confines his reading also to the columns of the organ of his party, he stands no chance whatever of getting at the true state of the case, but imbibes a distorted and prejudiced view of events, and not unfrequently an unjust prepossession against individual public men. But if both sides of the question were calmly discussed in his hearing, the elector would have an opportunity of forming an unbiased and fairer opinion both of men and measures, than can easily be obtained by reading and hearing, as most people do, one side only.
Besides, there is something more democratic in both candidates coming at once to appeal to a meeting of people of all parties, than for one candidate to collect his friends in one place, and the other muster his supporters in another, and each labor his hardest to make them more bigoted and one-sided in their views of public affairs, than they were before.
A public debate between candidates for prominent position, also, would exhibit their fitness or unfitness to take part in the State or National councils, more than anything else. Any candidate, no matter how ignorant of facts, or bare of ideas, he may be, can deliver a set speech before his own supporters, with the consciousness that no opponent is there to reply to him; but a public discussion would soon enable the public to know which was the abler man and the best fitted to represent them. And, if they were aware that their standard bearers would have to pass through the ordeal of public discussion, the party conventions would be more careful in their choice of candidates than they now are.
Add to all this that a political meeting of the sort now held in this section, where each speaker vies with the rest in lauding his own party ad nauseam, and abusing the other parties, is a most tedious affair, while a public discussion between candidates would often be spicy and amusing, and we have shown cause enough for substituting the Western plan of canvassing for that heretofore in vogue among us.