BUFFALO INDEPENDENT CLUB 313
I served with the Assembly, that, as a rule, the man who is the loudest
denouncer of corporate wealth — spelling "corporate" with a large "C"
and "wealth" with a large "W"— and who is the most inflammable in
his insistence, in public, that he will not permit the liberties of the
country to be subverted by the men of means, is himself the very man
for whom you want to look out most sharply when there comes up
something which some corrupt corporation does really want and about
which there is not any great popular excitement at the moment.
Now, gentlemen, I think you will all acknowledge this if you will
come to think of your own acquaintances — I am very sure that my
friends who have been in public life will recognize that what I have
said is absolutely true. Yet there are a good many estimable citizens
who entirely fail to take it into account in their practical dealings with
public men; a good many estimable citizens of one class who will
stand by any man without reference to his honesty if only he will
denounce wealth loudly enough, and a good many estimable citizens
of another class who will stand by any man, if he is only what they
call "conservative," and refrains from taking any position which will
tend to make wealth bear its proper share of the burdens of the
community.
A public man is bound to represent his constituents, but he is no
less bound to cease to represent them when, on a great moral question
of right or wrong, he feels that they are taking the wrong side. Let him
go out of politics rather than stay in at the cost of doing what his own
conscience forbids him to do; and, while upholding that principle in
theory, do not forget to uphold it in practice. Now, I think that among
the different problems that