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18313 JAMES FENIMORE-COOPER 239

your recommendation of meeting my namesake in Con-
gress. The pursuit of a political life is an utter abandon-
ment of all professional advantages; and as time must
necessarily elapse before I could attain the desired eleva-
tion, there is great danger that the salary of my office
would have to be used for filling up the gaunt forms of a
starving family. In addition to this I have no great relish
for politics as they are now. In these days one cannot be
a thoroughgoing politician, and such he must be to obtain
promotion, without bidding farewell to his honesty and
his intellectual freedom. Our parties are not organized
upon just principles, and do not pursue proper objects.
Unlimited obedience is required, your scruples are
laughed at, and your honest doubts stigmatized as folly.
To dare to think for yourself is to incur the penalties of
heresy, and though the stake and faggot are not allowed
at the present day as corrections of contumacy, yet the
offended sovereignty of party does all it can by condemn-
ing you to the retirement of private life. And then too the
contest is for office, emoluments, the mere tinsel and not
the substance and virtue of high station. An unreserved
connection with any party removes from the view the
great and laudable objects of ambition, or at least
weakens the love of them and renders the heart indifferent
to principles which ought to command its respect. The
people themselves are not corrupt. Dishonesty or little-
ness of purpose is principally confined to those who set up
for their leaders. These men find the prosecution of their
schemes facilitated by the character of the times. There
is no great national question to which public attention is
generally directed. There is nothing to test severely the
merits of the candidates for popular favor, and to touch
the best springs of action in the breasts of the people.



	18313 JAMES FENIMORE-COOPER 239 your recommendation of meeting my namesake in Con- gress. The pursuit of a political life is an utter abandon- ment of all professional advantages; and as time must necessarily elapse before I could attain the desired eleva- tion, there is great danger that the salary of my office would have to be used for filling up the gaunt forms of a starving family. In addition to this I have no great relish for politics as they are now. In these days one cannot be a thoroughgoing politician, and such he must be to obtain promotion, without bidding farewell to his honesty and his intellectual freedom. Our parties are not organized upon just principles, and do not pursue proper objects. Unlimited obedience is required, your scruples are laughed at, and your honest doubts stigmatized as folly. To dare to think for yourself is to incur the penalties of heresy, and though the stake and faggot are not allowed at the present day as corrections of contumacy, yet the offended sovereignty of party does all it can by condemn- ing you to the retirement of private life. And then too the contest is for office, emoluments, the mere tinsel and not the substance and virtue of high station. An unreserved connection with any party removes from the view the great and laudable objects of ambition, or at least weakens the love of them and renders the heart indifferent to principles which ought to command its respect. The people themselves are not corrupt. Dishonesty or little- ness of purpose is principally confined to those who set up for their leaders. These men find the prosecution of their schemes facilitated by the character of the times. There is no great national question to which public attention is generally directed. There is nothing to test severely the merits of the candidates for popular favor, and to touch the best springs of action in the breasts of the people.