The two men walked down the hill, and toward Thorndyke’s old quarters. They talked amicably and even intimately, but Thorndyke got a curious impression of reserve from Crane—and reserve was the last thing in the world to develop in Julian Crane. As they walked along the streets in the dazzling sun of December in Washington, they were speaking of the great economic questions with which the Congress would have to deal. Thorndyke, as an accomplished lawyer, saw certain difficulties in the way of regulating these matters which Crane did not at first perceive.
“After all,” said Thorndyke, “it comes down to whether either political party will deal honestly with these questions. If they do, a solution will be found, and the whole matter can, in the course of a few years, be properly adjusted.”
“What do you call perfect honesty in politics?” asked Crane, after a moment.
“That’s rather a large proposition,” replied Thorndyke, laughing. “I should say, if called upon to give an immediate definition, that perfect honesty in politics means keeping one’s hands clean in money matters, and being an outspoken friend or enemy.”
Crane’s heart sank at this. He did not know why he should have asked such a question, and he was hard hit by Thorndyke’s reply.
“There must be a good, wide margin allowed for offensive partisanship,” Thorndyke continued. “That’s the trouble with the professors of political economy in colleges—they leave human nature out of the equation. There’s my boss, Senator Standiford. He is as honest as the day as far as money goes, and honest in using his enormous power for the good of the party, and he was born with the notion that his party and the country are interchangeable terms. He uses dishonest men sometimes, but not dishonest methods. It is both shameful and ridiculous that a great State like ours should hand over such vast power to one man as it has to Senator Standiford, but that’s not his fault. It is rather to his credit that he has not misused his power. The trouble is, that the people will get accustomed to the system of one-man government, and when Senator Standiford goes hence, the party will choose another dictator, probably neither as honest or as able as he.”
“Senator Standiford is a rich man. Suppose he were poor? What percentage would you allow a poor man in political life in his efforts to be honest?”
“I can’t figure it out that way,” answered Thorndyke, “although I ought to know public life from the viewpoint of the poor but honest Congressman. I am not worth ten thousand dollars in the world outside of my Congressional salary. But as the Kentucky colonel said on the stump, ‘I am as honest as the times will allow.’”
“Don’t you think,” persisted Crane, for whom this discussion of honesty in public life had a powerful fascination, “that the same man in certain political circumstances would remain honest, while in different circumstances he might succumb to temptation? Take the case of a poor man in politics.”
“I admit that the most desperate venture on earth is for a man to attempt to live by politics. Some men have done it, like Patrick Henry, for example. But those men are quite beyond comparison with every-day men. However, Marcus Aurelius says, ‘A man should be upright, he should not be made to be upright.’”