is a commonplace, indeed, that a city is usually in worse condition
after it has been "cleaned up" than it was before, and I need not point
to New York, Los Angeles and Des Moines for the evidence as to the
social evil, and to any large city, East, West, North, South, for the
evidence as to the saloon. But the Puritans who finance such enterprises
get their thrills, not out of any possible obliteration of vice, but out
of the galloping pursuit of the vicious. The new Puritan gives no more
serious thought to the rights and feelings of his quarry than the gunner
gives to the rights and feelings of his birds. From the beginning of the
prohibition campaign, for example, the principle of compensation has
been violently opposed, despite its obvious justice, and a complaisant
judiciary has ratified the Puritan position. In England and on the
Continent that principle is safeguarded by the fundamental laws, and
during the early days of the anti-slavery agitation in this country it
was accepted as incontrovertible, but if any American statesman were to
propose today that it be applied to the license-holder whose lawful
franchise has been taken away from him arbitrarily, or to the brewer or
distiller whose costly plant has been rendered useless and valueless, he
would see the days of his statesmanship brought to a quick and violent
close.

But does all this argue a total lack of justice in the American
character, or even a lack of common decency? I doubt that it would be
well to go so far in accusation. What it does argue is a tendency to put
moral considerations above all other considerations, and to define
morality in the narrow Puritan sense. The American, in other words,
thinks that the sinner has no rights that any one is bound to respect,
and he is prone to mistake an unsupported charge of sinning, provided it
be made violently enough, for actual proof and confession. What is more,
he takes an intense joy in the mere chase: he has the true Puritan taste
for an _auto da fe_ in him. "I am ag'inst capital punishment," said Mr.
Dooley, "but we won't get rid av it so long as the people enjie it so
much." But though he is thus an eager spectator, and may even be lured
into taking part in the pursuit, the average American is not disposed to
initiate it, nor to pay for it. The larger Puritan enterprises of today
are not popular in the sense of originating in the bleachers, but only
in the sense of being applauded from the bleachers