It was in many respects a strange era; it justified the phrase which an eminent writer had suggested for it,—of the “moral interregnum.” Immersed in the cares of private business, and chiefly actuated by an insatiable craving for money or the luxury and social distinction which money brought, the majority of those men who should have been the stay and support of good government paid little heed to public affairs, but rather left them to the control of adventurers, of professional politicians who followed politics as gamblers follow cards,—for the sake of what they could steal from more honest men,—of the least intelligent and least moral members of the state. Their common pleas were, either that they were invariably out-manoeuvred in the political battle by these veteran strategists, and that they could do no real good at the primaries and the polls, or that the solid good sense and honesty of the country could be relied upon to come out and assume control whenever things passed beyond endurance, and that, meantime, all effort was simply thrown away. It is a natural assumption, now that the end has been seen of all men, that those who used these arguments must have been either fools or selfish knaves. Yet they comprised within their number a large proportion of the successful business and professional men of the country, who could not have thus succeeded had they been devoid of all ability, and who certainly regarded themselves as honest men. The result of their neglect of their country in behalf of their pockets was that while domestic morality, both ideal and real, remained in many parts of the land upon a lofty plane, public morality practically ceased to exist.

Men were elected to office, not because they were fitted for the positions to which they aspired, nor because any one believed them fitted, but because they were “available;” because they happened to have few active enemies; because they were comparatively unknown, and nothing could be said against them; because they were rich enough to contribute liberally to corruption funds for the purchase of venal voters; because, in short, they were especially unfit for either honor, trust, or responsibility. The tone of public life became deplorably low. Officials of every station accustomed themselves to ask, when any course of action offered itself, not “Is it right? Is it wise?” but “How will it affect my continuance in office? Will it hurt the party’s prospects?”

Saddest of all and most disheartening was the almost universal extent to which this feeling spread among the people. They came to consider this dishonorable and cowardly attitude on the part of Government officers as natural and quite to be expected. The few who remonstrated or pleaded for a more honest official spirit were regarded with good-natured contempt as men meaning well and having lofty ideals, but too visionary for “practical politics;” as “doctrinaires,” “theorists,” etc. There has been corruption in other lands and under other forms of government. But the demoralizing fact in the United States was, not so much that official corruption and cowardice was the rule, as that the people who had the power to rebuke and reform such a condition of things condoned it, took it for granted, continued the corrupt and cowardly time-servers in office and responsibility, or changed them for other equally unfit but shrewder rogues.

It was not strange, in this condition of public sentiment, that other trusts than those of Government were abused. The last decade of the Republic was signalized by an unprecedented number of defalcations, embezzlements, and similar crimes against private trust. In the treatment of these crimes, even more clearly than in regard of public dereliction, the utter demoralization of public opinion was demonstrated. It is true that the public prints teemed after each new rascality with virtuous demands for the infliction of condign punishment. It is true that prosecuting officers commonly made complaints and issued warrants with exemplary promptness, taking good care that the newspapers were duly informed of their energetic action. It is true that occasional embezzlers were actually punished by sentences of imprisonment fixed at the minimum extreme of lax and unjustly lenient laws. But these were exceptional cases. Many of the embezzlers were men of social standing or of political importance; they had numerous friends; and, no matter though their guilt was clear as the day, it was assumed by the nonchalant public,—taken for granted, even by those who had suffered most,—that these friends would use all their influence to obstruct or prevent merited punishment. In a majority of cases they were too successful. Officials who should have stood faithful sentinels over the public weal to compel the enforcement of justice, generally bowed before the influence which might be exerted to oust them from their offices if they should prove inconveniently virtuous. Sometimes the embezzler was allowed to bribe his custodian and escape. Sometimes he was admitted to bail in such a trifling sum that a percentage of his stealings paid the cost of a default. Sometimes he was allowed to bargain with those whom he had robbed.

It was not considered disgraceful or wrong, if a bank cashier had stolen enough to ruin his bank, for the directors to accept his offer to repay half the amount stolen, in consideration of their agreement not to prosecute him. Public sentiment admitted that this compounding felony was objectionable, but refused to condemn the directors who committed the crime for trying to save some of their property from complete wreck. It was taken for granted that men cared more for their wealth than for their honor or the public weal. Even such embezzlers as were actually imprisoned seldom failed to secure from pliant pardoning boards such commutations as rendered their punishment farcical. It came to be a common saying that it was safer to rob a bank of a million dollars than to steal five dollars from a merchant’s till to buy food for a starving wife or child.

The courts, which should have remained the trust and reliance of the people, became as untrustworthy as public sentiment itself. Lawyers adopted the rule that it was their part to win causes for their clients, right or wrong. “Get money! honestly if you can; but get money,” was the motto of the business element. “Win your case! by fair means, if possible; but win your case,” was the motto of the legal guild. The advocate who won his client’s case by taking advantage of technicalities or by securing an incapable or prejudiced jury, or by the introduction of false witnesses whose perjuries could not be exposed at the moment, was sure to attain wealth and a high position at the bar. Actual jury-bribing was suspected in many cases; but those who should have been the first to ferret out such offences cared not enough about the purity of the courts to trouble their leisure with the matter.

The judges aided in many States to make the courts over which they presided inefficient and to bring them into public contempt by their blind adherence to outworn precedent and their indiscriminating affection for technical pleadings. Though generally men of the highest personal probity, they might be relied upon in any trial to ignore the spirit of the law and the interests of society if a clever attorney could point out in the letter of the law or in some century-old precedent anything to justify them in so doing. A misplaced comma was sufficient to overthrow the intent of an entire statute.

This characteristic of the courts found ample room and verge enough for the most fantastic tricks in a society which was governed by annual legislatures, pouring forth with each succeeding session a very flood and freshet of ill-considered and crudely expressed legislation. So complicated and unintelligible at last became the law that those judges and counsellors who really loved Justice and persistently sought after her, were seldom able to discover her form or features through the mist and fog of statutes and codes and revisions and amendments and precedents which filled the atmosphere in every court devoted to law and, ostensibly, to justice. The wisest men and those who devoted their life-long study to the subject were not always able to tell what the law really meant, or whether it meant anything, under the varying interpretations put upon it by different expounders.

Thus it came to pass that any suitor or defendant, provided he was rich enough to secure adroit and learned counsel, was generally able so to delay and hamper the naturally loitering steps of the courts as, by the very law of chance, to bring about opportunities for escape which time could not help affording him. The rich man, whether in a civil or a criminal trial, was much more likely to win his case, whatever its merits, than the man who was unable to employ counsel familiar with the quips and crookednesses of the law. In truth, the prisoner accused of crime who was unable to pay large counsel fees or to bring “influence” to bear in some way or other upon the prosecuting officials, was apt to be treated with comparative severity. Within the same year a bank cashier of New York stole $800,000 from his bank, but escaped all punishment by negotiating with the directors for the return of $400,000; while a young street thief of the same city was sent to the penitentiary for twelve years for stealing a penknife worth twenty-five cents! The needy mechanic who purloined a few dollars worth of old junk and sold it to buy either bread for his family or liquor for himself was fairly sure to be punished with as long a term of imprisonment as the defaulter who made away with millions. He was, moreover, certain of punishment, if detected; while the greater thief had at least three chances in four of escaping untouched.

In all directions public sentiment had become corrupted; the popular aspiration had declined to low and sordid levels: yet men looked calmly on the sham and humbug and selfishness and dishonesty and injustice which made up the social order of the time, and felt neither fear nor disgust. Even those whose moral senses were acute enough to perceive the rottenness around them stopped their moral olfactories and blinded their moral vision with the unworthy reflection that the existing fabric would last out their time; and then the deluge might sweep whither it would.