Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/322

  combination with the requisite showing of political influence. What better can a people expect of legislators whom it virtually holds to the business of legislation by private agreement, than that they will also make private agreements on their own individual accounts? Congressmen have only to maintain a reasonable showing of returns to their constituents from the system of legislative barter, to effectually kill the kind of public sentiment that lacks the inspiration of some selfish interest. In effect, the people are without representation in Congress as regards their moral convictions.

The Indian iniquity, and these other evils, will persist as long as the irresponsible community stands equally with other communities in the ease with which it can secure legislative enactments, restrained only by such vague moral considerations as may in Congress survive the exigencies of the trading system. They will persist until the people are willing to give up some of their freedom in order that a few may not be too free; until there is toleration for a central authority which shall restrain the irresponsible community, as the communities themselves restrain the irresponsible individual.

There is no quick remedy in an appeal to the people. The remedy must go deep into grounded notions of what constitutes freedom and what really is government by the people; then it may reach that institution of perverted functions, Congress.