ade
manifest, but all save a very small part of that literature is produced
by quacks and addressed to an audience that is afraid to hear the truth.
So in politics. Almost alone among the civilized nations of the world,
the United States pursues critics of the dominant political theory with
mediaeval ferocity, condemning them to interminable periods in prison,
proceeding against them by clamour and perjury, treating them worse than
common blacklegs, and at times conniving at their actual murder by the
police. And so, above all, in religion. This is the only country of
Christendom in which there is no anti-clerical party, and hence no
constant and effective criticism of clerical pretension and corruption.
The result is that all of the churches reach out for tyranny among us,
and that most of them that show any numerical strength already exercise
it. In half a dozen of our largest cities the Catholic Church is
actually a good deal more powerful than it is in Spain, or even in
Austria. Its acts are wholly above public discussion; it makes and
breaks public officials; it holds the newspapers in terror; it
influences the police and the courts; it is strong enough to destroy and
silence any man who objects to its polity. But this is not all. The
Catholic Church, at worst, is an organization largely devoted to
perfectly legitimate and even laudable purposes, and it is controlled by
a class of men who are largely above popular passion, and intelligent
enough to see beyond the immediate advantage. More important still, its
international character gives it a detached and superior point of view,
and so makes it stand aloof from some of the common weaknesses of the
native mob. This is constantly revealed by its opposition to
Prohibition, vice-crusading and other such crazes of the disinherited
and unhappy. The rank and file of its members are ignorant and emotional
and are thus almost ideal cannon-fodder for the bogus reformers who
operate upon the proletariat, but they are held back by their clergy, to
whose superior interest in genuine religion is added a centuries-old
heritage of worldly wisdom. Thus the Church of Rome, in America at
least, is a civilizing agency, and we may well overlook its cynical
alliance with political corruption in view of its steady enmity to that
greater corruption which destroys the very elements of liberty, peace
and human dignity. It may be a bit too intelligently selfish and harshly
realistic, but it