Page:History of the Supreme court of the United States (IA historyofsupreme00myeriala).pdf/12

8. But no one can read the proofs herein presented without being impressed by the fact that the Supreme Court as a whole has been peculiarly free from venal corruption in an age when such corruption was common if not continuous. During the extended career of that Court, personal venality has not been the determining factor.

Instance after instance occurs where Justices, at the end of long service on that Bench, have died virtually penniless, or possessed of the most scantily moderate degree of means. Yet many of those very Justices were-the same who by their decisions gave to capitalists vast resources, or powers translatable into immense wealth. The influences so consistently operating upon the minds and acts of the incumbents were not venal, but class, influences, and were all the more effective for the very reason that the Justices in question were not open to pecuniarily dishonest practices. From training, association, interest and prejudice, all absorbed in the radius of permeating class environment, a fixed state of mind results. Upon conditions that the ruling class finds profitable to its aims, and advantageous to its power, are built codes of morality as well as of law, which codes are but reflections and agencies of those all-potent class interests.

In the case of men whose minds are already permanently molded to such purposes, and whose character and station forbid the use of illicit means, immeasurable subservience can be obtained which crude and vulgar money bribery would hopelessly fail to accomplish. Under these circumstances a great succession of privileges and powers are given grattitously, and class corruption appears as honest conviction because of the absence of personal temptations and benefits on the part of the Justices. In this deceptive and insidious guise supreme judicial acts go forth to claim the respect and submission of the working class against whom the decisions are applied.

Furthermore, in taking a large survey of historical events,