s to be got. They are ready to be unprincipled and unjust
rather than unpopular. It is so much easier for some men to stoop, to
bow, and to flatter, than to be manly, resolute, and magnanimous; and to
yield to prejudices than run counter to them. It requires strength and
courage to swim against the stream, while any dead fish can float with
it.

This servile pandering to popularity has been rapidly on the increase of
late years, and its tendency has been to lower and degrade the character
of public men. Consciences have become more elastic. There is now one
opinion for the chamber, and another for the platform. Prejudices
are pandered to in public, which in private are despised. Pretended
conversions--which invariably jump with party interests are more sudden;
and even hypocrisy now appears to be scarcely thought discreditable.

The same moral cowardice extends downwards as well as upwards. The
action and reaction are equal. Hypocrisy and timeserving above are
accompanied by hypocrisy and timeserving below. Where men of high
standing have not the courage of their opinions, what is to be expected
from men of low standing? They will only follow such examples as are set
before them. They too will skulk, and dodge, and prevaricate--be ready
to speak one way and act another--just like their betters. Give them
but a sealed box, or some hole-and-corner to hide their act in, and they
will then enjoy their "liberty!"

Popularity, as won in these days, is by no means a presumption in a
man's favour, but is quite as often a presumption against him. "No man,"
says the Russian proverb, "can rise to honour who is cursed with a stiff
backbone." But the backbone of the popularity-hunter is of gristle; and
he has no difficulty in stooping and bending himself in any direction to
catch the breath of popular applause.

Where popularity is won by fawning upon the people, by withholding the
truth from them, by writing and speaking down to the lowest tastes, and
still worse by appeals to class-hatred, [147] such a popularity must be
simply contemptible in the sight of all honest men. Jeremy Bentham,
speaking of a well-known public character, said: "His creed of politics
results less from love of the many than from hatred of the few; it is
too much under the influence of selfish and dissocial affection." To how
many men in our own day might not the same description apply?

Men of sterling character have the courage to speak the truth, even