The count of noses
determined, not the better policy, but the more powerful party. The weaker
submitted, as a rule, for it had to or risk a war in which it would be at
a disadvantage. Yet in all the early years of the republic they seem
honestly to have dignified their submission as "respect for the popular
verdict." They even quoted from the Latin language the sentiment that "the
voice of the people is the voice of God." And this hideous blasphemy was
as glib upon the lips of those who, without change of mind, were defeated
at the polls year after year as upon those of the victors.
Of course, their government was powerless to restrain any aggression or
encroachment upon the general welfare as soon as a considerable body of
voters had banded together to undertake it. A notable instance has been
recorded by Bamscot in his great work, "Some Evil Civilizations." After
the first of America's great intestinal wars the surviving victors formed
themselves into an organization which seems at first to have been purely
social and benevolent, but afterward fell into the hands of rapacious
politicians who in order to preserve their power corrupted their followers
by distributing among them enormous sums of money exacted from the
government by threats of overturning it. In less than a half century after
the war in which they had served, so great was the fear which they
inspired in whatever party controlled the national treasury that the total
sum of their exactions was no less annually than seventeen million
_prastams_! As Dumbleshaw naively puts it, "having saved their country,
these gallant gentlemen naturally took it for themselves.
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