THE SANCTITY OF PROPERTY.
Out of this prevailing idea grew many of the interpretations and partial enforcements. A legislator, magistrate or judge might be the very opposite of venal, and yet be irresistibly impelled by the force of training and association to take the current view of the unassailable rights and superiority of property. It would be biassed, in fact, ridiculous to say that the privileges and exemptions enjoyed by the rich were altogether the outcome of corruption by bribes. There is a much more subtle and far more effective and dangerous form of corruption. This is corruption of the mind. For innumerable centuries all government had proceeded, perhaps not avowedly, but in reality, upon the settled and consistent principle that the sanctity of property was superior to considerations of human life, and that a man of property could not very well be a criminal and a peril to the community. Under various disguises church, college, newspaper, politician, judge, all were expositors of this principle.
The people were drugged with laudations of property. But these teachings were supplemented by other methods which added to their effectiveness. We have seen how after the Revolution the propertied classes withheld suffrage from those who lacked property. They feared that property would no longer be able to dominate Government. Gradually they were forced to yield to the popular demand and allow manhood suffrage. This seemed to them a new and affrighting force; if votes were to determine the personnel and policy of Government, then the propertyless, being in the majority, would overwhelm them eventually and pass an entirely new code of laws.
In one State after another, the propertied class were driven, after a prolonged struggle, to grant citizens a vote, whether they had property or