Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/412

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

sisted Harrington. "Lawless in your heart, you have made these people lawless; hence the mobs. A crowd does not proceed by the nice forms of diplomacy and self-control that you employ. It gets what it wants as you get what you want; but its methods are different. It is quick, primal, brutal—yet not more brutal, not more remorseless than you with your calculating cunning—less cruel, if you ask me."

"Why, even—even the big—the biggest chance I took was a chance in the interest of civilization," Boland defended stubbornly.

But Henry lashed out indignantly: "You mean that fundamental rapacity of yours in accepting U. S. patents which you knew were based on an error—an error which you connived at suppressing? No—emphatically no! It was cold, calculating fraud. Better, Boland, that forest had stood untouched for generations than that you should hack it down to build a business on a crime, and create a county government which was not sound because the power was in the top instead of in the bottom. Oh, you can't be law and court and conscience for forty thousand people and have them retain character and courage and self-control! You make children out of them, not citizens. The very essential of democracy is that people shall do their own thinking."

"But the people make mistakes," urged Old Two Blades weakly.

"They couldn't make a bigger one than you have!"

Boland started, then went white and stood silent, with head slightly bowed.

"This country is a democracy, not a paternalism," Harrington declaimed. "You want to go too fast. The