I should say that they also continued very largely the emotional tradition in politics, and it is doubtful if in the nature of things the politics of literary men can ever be otherwise than emotional.  In fact, though the questions may no longer be so, the politics of vastly the greater number of Americans are so.  Nothing else would account for the fact that during the last ten or fifteen years men have remained Republicans and remained Democrats upon no tangible issues except of office, which could practically concern only a few hundreds or thousands out of every million voters.  Party fealty is praised as a virtue, and disloyalty to party is treated as a species of incivism next in wickedness to treason.  If any one were to ask me why then American authors were not active in American politics, as they once were, I should feel a certain diffidence in replying that the question of other people’s accession to office was, however emotional, unimportant to them as compared with literary questions.  I should have the more diffidence because it might be retorted that literary men were too unpractical for politics when they did not deal with moral issues.

Such a retort would be rather mild and civil, as things go, and might even be regarded as complimentary.  It is not our custom to be tender with any one who doubts if any actuality is right, or might not be bettered, especially in public affairs.  We are apt to call such a one out of his name and to punish him for opinions he has never held.  This may be a better reason than either given why authors do not take part in politics with us.  They are a thin-skinned race, fastidious often, and always averse to hard knocks; they are rather modest, too, and distrust their fitness to lead, when they have quite a firm faith in their convictions.  They hesitate to urge these in the face of practical politicians, who have a confidence in their ability to settle all affairs of State not surpassed even by that of business men in dealing with economic questions.

I think it is a pity that our authors do not go into politics at least for the sake of the material it would yield them; but really they do not.  Our politics are often vulgar, but they are very picturesque; yet, so far, our fiction has shunned them even more decidedly than it has shunned our good society—­which is not picturesque or apparently anything but a tiresome adaptation of the sort of drama that goes on abroad under the same name.  In nearly the degree that our authors have dealt with our politics as material, they have given the practical politicians only too much reason to doubt their insight and their capacity to understand the mere machinery, the simplest motives, of political life.

II.

There are exceptions, of course, and if my promise of reticence did not withhold me I might name some striking ones.  Privately and unprofessionally, I think our authors take as vivid an interest in public affairs as any other class of our citizens, and I should be sorry to think that they took a less intelligent interest.  Now and then, but only very rarely, one of them speaks out, and usually on the unpopular side.  In this event he is spared none of the penalties with which we like to visit difference of opinion; rather they are accumulated on him.