“Different people have different standards of honesty.”
Patty gasped at the directness of this stab, but Chalender laughed:
“And some people call that honesty which is really only an indifference to opportunity. Most of these starving farmers up here would shout with joy if I offered them twenty-five dollars an acre. If I sold it later for a hundred, they would howl that I had cheated them. But think how much more gracefully I should spend it.”
RoBards nodded. “As for grace, you could have no rivals.”
Chalender did not wince; he did not even shrug. He went on:
“But the thing will have to be decided by an election.”
“You can always buy votes. One of the inalienable rights of our citizens is the right to sell their birthrights.”
“Yes, but it takes such a pile of money to buy enough birthrights. Nobody can vote without owning real estate, and property gives people expensive notions. That’s why I am in favor of universal suffrage. I should be willing even to give the ladies the vote—or anything else the darlings desire.”
RoBards was hot enough to sneer:
“In a ladies’ election you would bribe them all with a smile.”