Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/196

 naturally and accurately, that the knaves and mountebanks who govern him are of the same kidney—in his own phrase, that they are in public life for what there is in it. It thus does not shock him to find them running true to the ordinances of their nature. If, indeed, any individual among them shows an unusual rectitude, and refuses spectacularly to take what might be his for the grabbing, Homo boobiens sets him down as either a liar or an idiot, and refuses to admire him. So with private rogues who tap the communal till. Democratic man is stupid, but he is not so stupid that he does not see the government as a group of men devoted to his exploitation—that is, as a group external to his own group, and with antagonistic interests. He believes that its central aim is to squeeze as much out of him as he can be forced to yield, and so he sees no immorality in attempting a contrary squeeze when the opportunity offers. Beating the government thus becomes a transaction devoid of moral turpitude. If, when it is achieved on an heroic scale by scoundrels of high tone, a storm of public indignation follows, the springs of that indignation are to be found, not in virtue, but in envy. In