Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/103

 measure, to the fact that the learned and puissant justices are, in the main, practical politicians themselves, and hence used to keeping their ears close to the grass-roots. Most of them, before they were elevated to the ermine, spent years struggling desperately for less exalted honours, and so, like Representatives, Senators and Presidents, they show a fine limberness of the biceps femoris, semitendinosus and semimembranosus, and a beautiful talent for reconciling the ideally just with the privately profitable. If their general tendency, in late years, has been to put the rights of property above the rights of man then it must be obvious that they have not lost any popularity thereby. In boom times, indeed, democracy is always very impatient of what used to be called natural rights. The typical democrat is quite willing to exchange any of the theoretical boons of freedom for something that he can use. In most cases, perhaps, he is averse to selling his vote for cash in hand, but that is mainly because the price offered is usually too low. He will sell it very willingly for a good job or for some advantage in his business. Offering him such bribes, in fact, is the chief occupation of all political parties under