lition of government.
Government means that kind of thing. Look at it! Here we enthrone the
hungry, vicious, uneducated mob of incapables, and then wonder why they
steal, and gorge and riot like satyrs. The wonder is they don't scrape
the paint off the walls."

"Oh, you go too far; a legislator wouldn't steal a spittoon."

"No, but the fellow he recommends for clerkship does."

"My idea is that there are very few men who take money."

"I admit that, but they'll all trade their job for another job. Honesty
is impossible. The Angel Gabriel would become a boodler under our
system of government. The cure is to abolish government."

This conclusion, impotent to Bradley, was practically all the savage
critic had to offer. Either go back to despotism or go ahead to no
government at all.

After they went out, Bradley sat down and wrote a letter to Judge
Brown, embodying the main part of this conversation: "It's enough to
make a man curse his country and his God to see how things run," he
said, at the end of writing out the ex-clerk's terrible indictment. "I
feel that he is right. I'm ready to resign, and go home, and never go
into politics again. The whole thing is rotten to the bottom."

But as the weeks wore on, he found that the indictment was only true of
a certain minority, but it was terribly true of them; but down under
the half-dozen corruptible agents, under the roar of their voices,
there were many others speaking for truth and purity. The obscure mass
meant to be just and honest. They were good fathers and brothers, and
yet they were forced to bear the odium that fell on the whole
legislature whenever the miscreant minority rolled in the mire and
walked the public streets.

There was one count, however, that remained good against nearly all of
the legislators: they seemed to lack conscience as regards public
money. Bradley remembered that this dishonesty extended down to the
matter of working on the roads in the country. He remembered that every
man esteemed it a virtue to be lazy, and to do as little for a day's
pay as possible, because it "came out of the town." He was forced to
admit that this was the most characteristic American crime. To rob the
commonwealth was a joke.

He ended by philosophizing upon it with the Judge, who came down in
late February to attend the session during the great railway fight.

The Judge put his heels on the window sill, and folded his arms over
the problem.

"Well, now,