GRAFT NOT NEW

["Ottawa Herald," 21 Aug 1905, page 4, column 2]

So much illumination is being turned on graft and grafters just now that the opinion is freely offered that the country is going to the dogs and official conduct to the devil. So much glamour is thrown around the "good old days" in distinction from the present corrupt days that the occasion is indeed rare when a sigh cannot be inspired for the degeneracy of the times.

The sentiment is, of course, part of the natural tendency of the human mind to glorify the past at the expense of the present. That there is nothing in present conditions or in the record of the government in its beginnings to warrant any such conclusion as is commonly indulged in about the virtues of the forefathers, every investigation of the records has shown.

A Chicago university professor is the latest iconoclast to shake the sawdust out of this persistent idol, by publishing the results of his investigation into early history. His discoveries show that human nature hasn't changed much in a hundred years - unless it has changed for the better and that the halo that hangs around the brows of many of the early statesmen is a creation of latter-day imagination.

The sentiment that glorifies the "honest days of the country's beginning," naturally turns, for instance, to Faneuil hall, the cradle of liberty, as the symbol of all the virtues which the country in these degenerate days lacks. Yet the Chicago university man has discovered that Peter Faneuil, who built the hall, got his money together by violating the law aimed to regulate the sale of liquor. In the light of unsentimental investigation Patrick Henry appears as a good deal of a trifler, with little pride in his personal appearance and no particular ambition beyond the exercise of his oratorical gifts. Even Benjamin Franklin, we are assured, would have his code of morals blacklisted by good society today, while Samuel Adams, financial record would give the most unfavored of present-day United States senators no cause to blush. The iconoclast has even discovered a few smudges on the record of Washington - but it were better to discountenance this discovery. Discussing this subject the Chicago university authority asserts that one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was afterward indicted for smuggling, and a leading senator was indicted for bribe-taking ten years after the formation of the government. Coming down to a later day than that touched by the Chicago man's investigation we have the stories that attribute to Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and other strong men in the country's history personal habits that would provoke the severest censure today.

The country is bad enough, the Lord knows; because human nature is bad enough, but things are growing better.

The "good old days" are part of the pretty scheme of fiction that deals with brave knights and fairy princesses.