Judicial authorities have statutes and precedents to guide them, but every new case presents peculiar circumstances which may furnish opportunity or concealment for a sinister deflection. When we come to superior executive officers who are entrusted with large discretionary powers, and to legislators whose main function is the determination of policy, it is evident that the path of duty is frequently indefinite. To officials so situated personal advantages may offer themselves on both sides of a given question. Amid so complicated a play of motives as must assail these authorities, it becomes at times a matter of almost infinite difficulty to distinguish and disentangle those more or less remotely personal and venal and to give proper weight to those only that make for the welfare of the state.

In discussing the question of the clearness with which duty presents itself we have thus far assumed that relatively exact positive norms are available. The question is greatly complicated, however, by the reflection that we must deal not only with the law but also with the prophets. What of those who, like the socialists, dream of a future state to which they owe allegiance rather than to the present state? Or of those whose elevation to power, as not infrequently happens under representative government, is due to a certain class in the community, the ideals of which they feel bound to support, be they leveling or aristocratic? Assuming that officials or voters of this kind seek no personal advantage whatever, the accusation of corruption would not hold against them, although those injured by their action would most certainly make such charges.

On the other hand advanced reformers do not hesitate to charge with corruption many existing social institutions of apparent solidity. Periods of confusion in constitutional arrangements, as Mr. H. J. Ford has pointed out,' are apt to be corrupt, or at least filled with charges of corruption. Doubtless the same observation would hold true for periods of class feeling or moral unsettlement, which, after all, are only the precursors of constitutional reform. At times when all kinds of conflicting views of duty are current, it is of course easy for different individuals and classes to form extremely divergent

1 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, vol. xix (1904), p. 673.

views of the morality or immorality of given acts or institutions. Thus, among us, property of various sorts and property in general, government in certain forms or in all forms, marriage, the church, medicine and law, and those who represent them, are all denounced by small or large groups as graft and grafters. And indeed one need not be a thoroughgoing radical to observe that in some instances narrow and selfish interests have crept into these institutions, warped their highest ideals and crippled their efficiency. There seems to be little justification, however, for the employment of the word corruption in such sweeping fashion. Those who so employ it can not pretend that any general consensus of moral opinion supports their usage. No doubt many propositions for social change which are now considered extremely radical will gradually gain converts and will ultimately be enacted into law; but not all reforms can appeal unerringly to the future for justification. Institutions hotly assailed in times past have not infrequently outlived their detractors and developed new possibilities of social utility. The formation of modern nationality itself wore the appearance of corruption to many contemporary observers. With all due respect for unfledged reforms, we may fitly remind their advocates that the force of a hard and stinging word like corruption is materially weakened by employing it in senses familiar only to the members of a small circle. Such reckless usage is similar to that of the party politicians criticized above, and it is similarly adapted to produce either a callous levity or a sour distrust of social integrity which in the end must react unfavorably upon every constructive effort for social betterment.

IV. The motive of a corrupt act must be some advantage more or less directly personal. The grosser the nature of the advantage sought and the more directly selfish the purpose, the worse from the moral point of view is the transaction. Thus in the case of venal voters or boodling aldermen we have direct transfers of money or its equivalent, to be employed later, it may be, solely to the advantage of the men who sell themselves. Or still more reprehensible, high police officials or even mayors of cities may be in receipt of sums which they know were paid

originally by criminals or prostitutes for license to disobey the jaw. Perhaps we are too prone to think of all political corruption as consisting essentially of such gross cases and sordid transactions. In one way it is unfortunate that this is not the case, for, if it were, the task of defining and uprooting the evil by law would be comparatively easy. As a matter of fact we have to deal with every possible nuance of corruption, shading off from the most palpably illegal and immoral acts to apparently harmless transactions that are of everyday occurrence even in circles that would hotly deny the least imputation of wrongdoing.

Let us consider first the various gradations of corrupt action as regards the advantages offered and sought. There are crassly venal persons, of course, whose itching palms are held outstretched for cash bribes, but these after all are the small and stupid minority of the army of corruptionists. Many who would scorn a direct bribe are, however, quite willing to receive considerations more tactfully offered but almost as purely material -shares of stock, railroad passes, salaried positions, etc. In pointing out the distinction between bribery and corruption, the large possibilities of "auto-corruption" have been touched upon. The absence of a personal tempter seems very often to veil the real nature of a corrupt act, and contemporary usage completes the illusion of innocence. Tax-dodging is a case in point. Here the citizen is seeking, not a bribe, of course, but merely to cut down as far as possible an inevitable deduction. from his income. He may depend upon his political influence, his friendship with assessors, his contributions to campaign funds, or upon the misrepresentation of facts in obtaining the reduction, but he would refuse indignantly to offer a cash bribe to secure action which he knew would be disadvantageous to the government. He might refuse with equal heat to accept a cash bribe to secure his continued allegiance to a party or his continued support of particular politicians. It hardly occurs to him that in a sense he is bribing himself with a part of his own income. Of course this case leaves open the question of the justice of the tax and of the failure of the state to provide suitable technical safeguards to prevent evasion. Unjust or ill

constructed tax laws do not, indeed, justify corrupt action on the part of individuals, but they do transfer part of the moral guilt to the state. Other instances of veiled corruption readily suggest themselves-the intrigues of banks to secure the deposit of public funds, the devices employed to escape tenement-house, sanitary or life-saving inspections, the appropriation by officials of government supplies or services as "perquisites" of office, and so on.'

Besides material inducements almost every object of human desire may tempt to corrupt action. Social position, personal reputation, office, power, the favor of women, the gratification of revenge-all these have been artfully adapted by corruptionists to bear with the greatest weight upon the tempted individual. Far more often, however, temptations of this kind originate within. They are the more dangerous because they prevail with men of much higher type than venal voters or boodling aldermen. But it will be objected that these are not necessarily objects of corrupt desire; that on the contrary they are currently recognized as part of the necessary driving power of political and other human activities, and praised as such by contemporaries and historians alike. The point is well taken in so far as it is maintained that such rewards are not necessarily sought by corrupt means. So far as that is concerned, the money which a corrupt legislator accepts is not bad in itself, nor need it be put by him to other than very creditable uses. The evil lies in the deflection from duty which the money. bought, in the resultant deterioration of character and in the contagion of bad example. Precisely the same thing may be said of the so-called higher objects of desire to gain which men sell their political honor. This distinction goes far toward disposing of the objection that such motives are not corrupt because they are currently recognized as necessary and beneficial in political life. So far as their effect is the reinforcement of the influences which make for the performance of public duty there is no reason why they should not be regarded as good. To regard them in the same way when they have a directly contrary moral effect is a pernicious perversion of a true idea.

Cf. C. Howard, "The Spirit of Graft," Outlook, vol. lxxxi (1905), p. 365.

Nevertheless the fact must be faced that the public conscience is often deceived on this point; and that as a consequence practices are tolerated which will not bear the most cursory moral inspection. Sometimes these practices become so common that all consciousness of wrong-doing is lost. On this ground it might be maintained with reason that they are not corrupt according to the conventional morality of the time. It is this condition of affairs which makes the subtler aspects of corruption so much more dangerous and so much less easy to cope. with than common bribery. Yet even here the outlook is hopeful. Corruption in its more insidious forms is not the vice of low intellects. Hence in many cases education of the public conscience will either suffice to banish these forms of evil or may be depended upon to find the legal means of destroying them. Our own recent experience with the abolition of railroad passes is a case in point, although passes can hardly be considered an extremely subtle means of corruption. Social ostracism, public contempt and loathing of the corruptionist, regardless of his looted wealth, may prove a stronger deterrent in the future. At present, perhaps, too many of us live in glass houses to make stone-throwing general and effective.

V. Just as the advantages sought by corrupt action may shade off from the more to the less material, so also the personal interest involved is susceptible of numerous gradations from egoism to altruism. It may be entirely selfish, as in the case of a bribe credited directly to the bank account of the bribe-taker. It may be extended to include the welfare of relatives—a form of corruption so common as to have acquired a name of its

It may be broader still, appearing as favoritism to friends. Finally, it may be so extended that the individual interest is merged in the interest of certain groups, such as the party, the church, the labor union, the secret society and so on. The state is by no means the only sufferer by this process, any more than it is the only social group afflicted by corrupt practices. An official sentimentally mindful of the needs of Mother Church may cheerfully consent to burden the public treasury with a large part of the cost of maintaining an orphan asylum