ected
with its original doctrine. Thus the Republican Party, relying at first
wholly upon the votes of the industrial North, which was generally in
favour of a high tariff, took over from the old Whig Party a
Protectionist tradition, though obviously there is no logical connection
between Free Trade and Slavery. Also, in any organized party, especially
where politics are necessarily a profession, there is an even more
powerful factor working against the original purity of its creed in the
immense mass of vested interests which it creates, especially when it is
in power--men holding positions under it, men hoping for a "career"
through its triumphs, and the like. It may be taken as certain that no
political body so constituted will ever voluntarily consent to dissolve
itself, as a merely propagandist body may naturally do when its object
is achieved.

For some time, as has been seen, the Republicans continued to retain a
certain link with their origin by appearing mainly as a pro-Negro and
anti-Southern party, with "Southern outrages" as its electoral
stock-in-trade and the maintenance of the odious non-American State
Governments as its programme. The surrender of 1876 put an end even to
this link. The "bloody shirt" disappeared, and with it the last rag of
the old Republican garment. A formal protest against the use of
"intimidation" in the "Solid South" continued to figure piously for some
decades in the quadrennial platform of the party. At last even this was
dropped, and its place was taken by the much more defensible demand that
Southern representatives should be so reduced as to correspond to the
numbers actually suffered to vote. It is interesting to note that if the
Republicans had not insisted on supplementing the Fourteenth Amendment
by the Fifteenth, forbidding disqualification on grounds of race or
colour, and consequently compelling the South to concede in theory the
franchise of the blacks and then prevent its exercise, instead of
formally denying it them, this grievance would automatically have been
met.

What, then, remained to the Republican Party when the "number it first
thought of" had been thus taken away? The principal thing that remained
was a connection already established by its leading politicians with the
industrial interests of the North-Eastern States and with the groups of
wealthy men who, in the main, controlled and dealt in those interests.
It became the party of industrial Capitalism as