As soon as men recognise that the defeat of a government bill means a change of ministry, the pressure is great to sacrifice personal opinions on that bill to the greater principles for which the party stands; and the more fully the system develops, the clearer becomes the incompatibility between voting as the member of Parliament pleases on particular measures, and maintaining in power the party he approves.
"The Government of England (Vol. I)"
A. Lawrence Lowell
It was in reference to these politicians that Benton quoted with approval a letter from ex-President Madison, which ran:- The danger is not to be concealed, that the sympathy arising from known causes, and the inculcated impression of a permanent incompatibility of interests between the South and the North may put it in the power of popular leaders, aspiring to the highest stations, to unite the South, on some critical occasion, in a course that will end by creating a new theatre of great, though inferior, interest.
"Thomas Hart Benton"
Theodore Roosevelt
Even Benton himself showed a curiously pathetic eagerness to prove both to others and himself that the cause of the increasing disparity in growth, and incompatibility in interest between the two sections, must be due to some temporary and artificial cause, and endeavored to hide from all eyes, even from his own, the fact that the existence of slavery was working, slowly but surely, and with steadily increasing rapidity, to rend in sunder the Union which he loved and served with such heartfelt devotion.
"Thomas Hart Benton"
Theodore Roosevelt
