men who are placed under a temptation to make them, but these men are guarded against penalties apt to be brought on them by abusing their power. A poor woman who proceeds against one of them, for making a groundless accusation ruinous to her character, does so with this risk before her: that, if she fails to get a verdict, she has to pay the defendant's costs (not taxed costs but full costs); whereas a verdict in her favor does not give her costs: only by a special order of the judge does she get costs! And this is the "even-handed justice "provided by a government freer in form than any we have ever had!"[1]
Let it not be supposed that in arguing thus I am implying that forms of government are unimportant. While contending that they are of value only in so far as a national character gives life to them, it is consistent also to contend that they are essential as agencies through which that national character may work out its effects. A boy cannot wield to purpose an implement of size and weight fitted to the hand of a man. A man cannot do effective work with the boy's implement: he must have one adapted to his larger grasp and greater strength. To each the implement is essential; but the results which each achieves are not to be measured by the size or make of the implement alone, but by its adaptation to his powers. Similarly with political instrumentalities. It is possible to hold that a political instrumentality is of value only in proportion as there exists a strength of character needful for using it, and at the same time to hold that a fit political instrumentality is indispensable. Here, as before, results are not proportionate to appliances; but they are proportionate to the force for due operation of which certain appliances are necessary.
One other still more general and more subtle kind of political bias has to be guarded against. Beyond that excess of faith in laws and in political forms which is fostered by awe of regulative agencies, there
- ↑ When, in dealing with the vitiation of evidence, I before referred to the legislation here named, I commented on the ready acceptance of those one-sided statements made to justify such legislation, in contrast with the contempt for those multitudinous proofs that gross abuses would inevitably result from the arrangements made. Since that passage was written, there has been a startling justification of it. A murder has been committed by a gang of sham-detectives (one of them a government employe); and the trial has brought out the fact that for the last three years the people of Lille have been subject to an organized terrorism which has grown out of the system of prostitute-inspection. Though, during those three years, five hundred women are said by one of these criminals to have fallen into their clutches—though the men have been blackmailed and the women outraged to this immense extent, yet the practice went on for the reason (obvious enough, one would have thought, to need no proof by illustration) that those aggrieved preferred to submit rather than endanger their characters by complaining; and the practice would doubtless have gone on still but for the murder of one of the victims. To some this case will carry conviction: probably not, however, to those who, in pursuance of what they are pleased to call "practical legislation," prefer an induction based on a Blue Book to an induction based on universal history.
