IV
From judgeship to attorneyship of a great corporation has recently become a common promotion. The number of ex-judges who have been thus translated to higher sees is notable: one finds or hears of them in many places. Republics may be ungrateful, as the adage runs, but not so the magnates. The gratitude of the latter may not be wholly platonic; it includes, no doubt, a lively sense of favors to come. But whether prospective or retrospective, it expresses itself in deeds of recompense, and that is the main test. It is a discriminating gratitude, moreover. Keenly enough, it recognizes the comparative value of service. Other servitors of the magnates may toil faithfully, and receive but moderate reward. The moulders of opinion, such, for instance, as the newspaper men, may ask for preferment, and be met by the impatient retort of Richard III to Buckingham, “I am not in the giving vein to-day.” But for one who can interpret the law as it should be interpreted, there are glory and riches to be had for the asking.
CHAPTER VII
Our Moulders of Opinion
“There never was a time,” says Justice Brewer, in the concluding lecture of a series recently delivered by him at Yale University, “when public opinion was more potent.” Possibly the saying is true; but whatever force it may have lies in the application. Public opinion may make for a general passivity—an acquiescence in things as they are—quite as much as for a general strenuousness. Nowhere, for instance, among civilized peoples, is public opinion more powerful than in a quiet and isolated community, held fast to certain habitual modes of speech and action. Only a brave man, or a desperate woman, so environed, would dare defy the tribal customs.
Public opinion in these United States may be more potent than ever before, but the personal attitude which it supports and encourages becomes more and more one of acquiescence in the existing régime. A legislative reaction and a judicial reaction are manifested; and a growing irritation is expressed, as from time to time those rude disturbers of the public peace, the social reformers, come forward with plans for curing imputed evils. Social and political quietism becomes our everyday philosophy. An “air of contentment and enthusiastic cheerfulness ... characterizes our society,” writes Professor William G. Sumner, of Yale, in a recent number of the Independent; and though the judgment might be somewhat more accurately worded, he is not far wrong. A keen-eyed observer from Italy,—Professor Angelo Mosso, of Turin,—who visited us a few years ago, gives somewhat similar testimony. The fact astonishes him, as he confesses, since he saw much of political and industrial evil which he could not comprehend a democracy enduring; yet for all that the evidence was convincing.