The Professional Politician

Feilding Star, Volume XII, Issue 95, 3 February 1891, Page 2

The Professional Politician

j The' professional politician is a man who lives by politics as the professional chess-player lives by chess. His profession has to fill his pockets and find bread I. for his children, and politics must be kept " going to. do it. The chess-player sacrifices ;■ pawns to gain his end. The stoker shovels on coals into the furnace to make his r engine gallop ; and the electrician pours -vitriol into the battery to produce a cur- *; rent in his: wires. They have none of ": them the slightest scruple in doing these • things— they belong to the business, and ' i the professional politician lias no scruple in playing with facts, and throwing them ,' away as pawns in his game; or of excit- , ing the passions and prejudices of men, prof using the most biting and corroding 5 acid in his efforts to evoke a current of , feeling. "When an organist desires to . produce a noise, he pulls out stop diapason, and. dances on the pedals. The prb- ; fessional politician deals with the public. , in the same way ; that is his ; instrument. What in the organ are the pedals for but to be kicked, and the " keys but to be , struck^ and the stops but to be.drawn out, ; and what are the social classes but the ; manuals, and the individuals composing them the ,keys, and the grudges, greed, ambition, envy and prejudice but the stops, which, a clever player understands how to manipulate ? — S. Baring-Gould.