C. Chauncey Burr on the Coalescence of Mankind

Northern Democrat and Copperhead, C. Chauncey Burr, had some interesting comments about the formation of political parties.

--August Glen-James, editor

Where the leaders and working men of a party are a set of small desperadoes, the party itself will soon become a political "Lazzaroni."

Water does not more naturally find its level, than the moral affinities of mankind coalesce. A political party which institutes falsehood, persecution, and riotous violence as the chief means of support, will be quite sure to attract to its ranks whatever of brute activity there may be in surrounding society. Where the leaders and working men of a party are a set of small desperadoes, the party itself will soon become a political "lazzaroni"—a receptacle of all the activists, calumniators, uneasy spirits, and bobtail characters in community. That is the penalty which God attaches to corrupt organizations, that they shall rot with their own infection, by perpetually reabsorbing the pestilence which they throw out around them.

Burr, C. Chauncey. Old Guard: Democracy and the Bobtail Party. Vol. I, June 1862.