III. The third apology for corruption is that it saves us from mob rule. In Professor Ford’s felicitous phrase the appearance of corruption “instead of being the betrayal of democracy may be the diplomatic treatment of ochlocracy, restraining its dangerous tendencies and minimising its mischiefs.”[6] According to this view the machine, dominated by the boss or gang, is the defender of society itself against the attacks of our internal barbarians. Tammany Hall had the brazen effrontery to assume this attitude during the New York mayoralty campaign of 1886, when it nominated Mr. Hewitt in opposition to Henry George. “Yet it would be difficult to name a time in recent years when frauds so glaring and so tremendous in the aggregate have been employed in behalf of any candidate as were committed in behalf of Mr. Hewitt in 1886.”[7] Society would seem to be in desperate straits, indeed, if it needed such defenders and such methods of defence. In favour of their employment it is sometimes said that our propertied and educated classes have grown away from the great democratic mass. Of themselves they would be quite incapable of protecting the goods, material and ideal, which are intrusted to them. The corrupt machine, seeking its own interest, it is true, nevertheless performs the invaluable social service of keeping the restless proletariat in subjection. In order to obtain the votes of ignorant and venal citizens the unscrupulous political leader is obliged to perform innumerable petty services for them, as, for example, securing jobs, both in the public service and outside, supplying or obtaining charitable relief in times of need, speaking a friendly word to the police magistrate after a neighbourhood brawl, providing recreation in the form of tickets to chowder excursions during the summer and to “pleasure club” balls during the winter. Bread and circuses being thus supplied, our higher civilisation is presumably secure. If the corrupt machine did not perform these services, it is assumed by some timorous persons that the mob would break forth, gut our shops, rob our tills, burn, and kill in unrestrained fury.