They only make large contributions to the party election fund, out of which the election expenses of the majority are defrayed.79 Bribery exists in Congress, but is confined to a few members, say 5 per cent. of the whole number. … The taking of other considerations than money, such as a share in a lucrative contract, or a railway pass, or a “good thing” to be secured for a friend, prevails among legislators to a somewhat larger extent.… One may roughly conjecture that from 15 to 20 per cent. of the members of Congress, or of an average State legislature, would allow themselves to be influenced by inducements of this kind.… Jobbery of various kinds, i.e. the misuse of a public position for the benefit of individuals, is pretty frequent. It is often disguised as a desire to render some service to the party; and the same excuse is sometimes found for a misappropriation of public money. Patronage is usually dispensed with a view of party considerations or to win personal support. But this remark is equally true of England and France, the chief difference being that, owing to the short terms and frequent removals, the quantity of patronage is relatively greater in the United States.’
On the whole, Mr. Bryce concludes, if ‘we leave ideals out of sight, and try America by an actual standard, we shall find that while the legislative bodies fall below the level of purity maintained in England and Germany, probably also in France and Italy, her Federal and State Administration, in spite of the evils flowing from an uncertain tenure, is not, in point of integrity, at this moment sensibly inferior to the Administrations of European countries.’80
This judgment certainly does not err on the side of severity. If in England a great admirer of our parliamentary institutions, while boasting that no Prime Minister had been seriously charged with pecuniary corruption, and that no Cabinet Minister had been known for the last forty years to have taken money as a bribe, was obliged to add that several Cabinet Ministers of both parties in the State were suspected of complicity in railroad jobs and frauds on the revenue; that the whole of that vast department of legislation which affects the interest of corporations and manufacturers was systematically managed, or at least influenced, by corruption; that about 5 per cent. of the members of both Houses of Parliament were accustomed to take direct money bribes; that one in every five or six members was pretty certainly open to corrupt jobs, while suspicion of dishonesty of some kind attached to a much larger number, we should scarcely, I think, consider our parliamentary government a success.
Many of the causes of the vices of American government are inherent in democracy, but there are two aggravating causes which I have not mentioned. The rule that the person elected to either House of Congress must be a resident in the State for which he sits abridges greatly the choice of able and efficient men, and much strengthens the power of the local machine; while the large salaries attached to the position of senator or representative make it—even apart from its many indirect advantages—an object of keen ambition to the professional politician. Members of each House have a salary of 1,000l. a year, besides some small allowance for travelling and other expenses. In 1873, the two Houses passed an Act increasing many official salaries and adding a third to their own salaries, and, by a curiously characteristic provision, the congressional salaries, and these alone, were made retroactive. The appropriation, however, by Congress of nearly 40,000l. to itself excited so much indignation that it was repealed in the next Congress.81
The members of the House of Representatives sit only for two years, which probably adds something to the desire for speedy gain. At the same time, it appears certain that the Federal Government is less deeply tainted with corruption than a large proportion of the State legislatures, far less deeply than the Governments of nearly all the more important towns.
There is one thing which is worse than corruption. It is acquiescence in corruption. No feature of American life strikes a stranger so powerfully as the extraordinary indifference, partly cynicism and partly good nature, with which notorious frauds and notorious corruption in the sphere of politics are viewed by American public opinion. There is nothing, I think, altogether like this to be found in any other great country. It is something wholly different from the political torpor which is common in half-developed nations and corrupt despotisms, and it is curiously unlike the state of feeling which exists in the French Republic. Flagrant instances of corruption have been disclosed in France since 1870, but French public opinion never fails promptly to resent and to punish them. In America, notorious profligacy in public life and in the administration of public funds seems to excite little more than a disdainful smile. It is treated as very natural—as the normal result of the existing form of government.
I imagine that most persons who formed their opinions, as historians are apt to do, mainly by the examples of the past would judge very unfavourably the prospects of country where there was so much corruption and so much toleration of corruption in public life. The words of Jugurtha might well rise to their lips: ‘Urbem venalem, et mature perituram si emptorem invenerit!’ They would be inclined to conclude that, if the United States escaped great perils from without, this was mainly due to its extraordinarily advantageous position, and that internally it presented in a very marked degree the signs of moral dissolution which portend the decadence of nations. I believe, however, that the best judges, who are well acquainted with America, would concur in believing that such a judgment would be fallacious. America illustrates even more clearly than France the truth which I have already laid down, and which will again and again reappear in these volumes—that pure democracy is one of the least representative of governments. In hardly any other country does the best life and energy of the nation flow so habitually apart from politics. Hardly any other nation would be more grossly misjudged if it were mainly judged by its politicians and its political life.82 It seems a strange paradox that a nation which stands in the very foremost rank in almost all the elements of a great industrial civilisation, which teems with energy, intelligence and resource, and which exhibits in many most important fields a level of moral excellence that very few European countries have attained, should permit itself to be governed, and represented among the nations, in the manner I have described. How strange it is, as an Italian statesman once said, that a century which has produced the telegraph and the telephone, and has shown in ten thousand forms such amazing powers of adaptation and invention, should have discovered no more successful methods of governing mankind! The fact, however, is as I have presented it, and there are few more curious inquiries than its causes.
The foregoing pages will, I think, have at least shown the chief sources from which the corruption has sprung. To quote once more the words of Mr. Bryce: ‘Every feature of the machine is the result of patent causes. The elective offices are so numerous that ordinary citizens cannot watch them, and cease to care who gets them; the conventions come so often that busy men cannot serve in them; the minor offices are so unattractive that able men do not stand for them. The primary lists are so contrived that only a fraction of the party get on them, and of this fraction many are too lazy, or too busy, or too careless to attend. The mass of the voters are ignorant; knowing nothing about the personal merits of the candidates, they are ready to follow their leaders like sheep. Even the better class, however they may grumble, are swayed by the inveterate habit of party loyalty, and prefer a bad candidate of their own party to a (probably no better) candidate of the other party. It is less trouble to put up with impure officials, costly city governments, a jobbing State legislature, an inferior sort of Congressman, than to sacrifice one's own business in the effort to set things right. Thus the machine works on, and grinds out places, power, and the opportunities of illicit gain to those who manage it.’83
These things, however, would not be acquiesced in if it were not that an admirable written Constitution, enforced by a powerful and vigilant Supreme Court, had restricted to small limits the possibilities of misgovernment. All the rights that men value the most are placed beyond the reach of a tyrannical majority. Congress is debarred by the Constitution from making any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or abridging the freedom of speech and of the press, or the right of assembly, or the right of petition. No person can be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. All the main articles of what British statesmen would regard as necessary liberties are guaranteed, and property is so fenced round by constitutional provisions that confiscatory legislation becomes almost impossible. No private property can be taken for public use without just compensation, and the Federal Constitution contains an invaluable