POLITICAL HONORS
Rosser, John E.
Political Honors By JOHN E. ROSSER WE ARE WONT to characterize as honors all those prizes which betoken prowess at the polls. A generic term of high import is made to blanket both the suffrage-won...
...Political distinction of the sordid and unprincipled never conferred an honor, for honorableness is no external thing...
...A Galileean Peasant who bathed the feet of His followers announced the only basis upon which honor may come, when he said: "Whosoever of you would be first among you shall be servant of all...
...A generic term of high import is made to blanket both the suffrage-won meed of him who in humility contemplates the general weal and the infamy-bought guerdon of him who has debauched the majority that he may buccaneer the whole...
...The degree of preferment is a matter of secondary moment, if the place, whether high or low, be utilized for faithful service...
...There can be no such thing as honor for him who, to attain some point of vantage, strikes hands with evil, gives pledge to plunderers, and covenants with crime...
...The courtesan elevated upon a dais and hailed as the Goddess of Reason was a courtesan still...
...The demagogue who barters deceit for ballots, the political debauchee who buys with gold high place merited by the incorruptible alone, should stand with the procurer and the prostitute, to enjoy with them the empty gauds of vice...
...Elevation of the vicious and corrupt to high office but augments vileness whose taint had thereto been circumscribed by blest obscurity, merely places wickedness upon the pedestal of its own shame...
...The special ambassador of iniquity, though he stand at court, can not doff the vestments of pollution...
...That same Greek would certainly have branded with ignominy the hireling lawmaker who lends himself and the trust of his people to the unhallowed work of turning into predatory coffers the minted blood of the ignorant and defenseless...
...We must needs recall that an ancient Greek thought efficiency in a public scavenger brought honor...
...Surely, we should now have learned that victory in the battle of ballots has never yet increased the stature of a pigmy, or proved an alchemy to transmute baseness into worth...
Vol. 3 • July 1911 • No. 28
