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peculiar to those who hold the strings of the public purse? Have
not some managers of
large commercial companies made profits
by inside knowledge and manipulation that might have accrued
to the stockholders? Is there no favoritism in and
appointments
contracts of the kind that in is called If a offi
politics graft? city
cial knowing of operations likely to enhance the value of a piece
of land buys it from an owner who does not know of them, what
should we think? But is this different from a director's buying
stock, which he has reason to know will rise in price, from a stock
holder who is selling without the knowledge the director has ob
tained as his trusted representative? If a retiring mayor who has
caused the city heavy loss, whether innocently or not, were to be
voted and paid by the city council a large pension for life, might
not the members of that body error in
expiate their jail? In short,
is the fiduciary obligation of public officials to the citizens differ
ent in kind or degree from that of officers of to their
companies
stockholders? It is difficult to prevent politicians from making a
or or their friends, out of
profit, directly indirectly, for themselves
their positions, when some men prominent in business do likewise
uncensured and uncondemned. Nor can we fairly attribute to
democracy evils tolerated in commercial life.
Right and wrong have always existed and always will. A lack
of probity in public life is no new thing. When Alexander Hamil
ton resigned as Secretary of the
Treasury, saying he could not
support his on the then in America,
family salary, Talleyrand,
remarked that a minister of state who retired, giving that as his
reason, must be a little simple (" un peu niais"). In most countries
at that time was common. Enthusi
peculation by public officials
asts thought democracy would abolish it; but no form of govern
ment can human nature, or eradicate the
wholly change tempta
tion to do wrong. There are multitudes of men holding responsible
positions in both public and private life who have not bowed the
knee to Baal. In fact there is certainly less corruption among
office-holders now than there was in Europe in the eighteenth
century, but popular forms of government will hardly be rid of it
until a on
higher standard is exacted the street, and those who
violate it are socially tabooed.
Another defect attributed to democracies is that they are said
to be fickle, and the example of the Prohibition
proverbially
to our Constitution a
Amendment gives the foreigner good case
for a gibe. It was ratified by the several states with only two dis