Prejudices, second seriesMencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
History
Prejudices, second series
Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
American essays -- 20th century; American literature -- History and criticism; Literature -- History and criticism
In all his career no one ever heard him make an argument for the rights
of the citizen; his eloquence was always expended in expounding the
duties of the citizen. I have before me a speech in which he pleaded
for "a spirit of kindly justice toward every man and woman," but that
seems to be as far as he ever got in that direction--and it was the
gratuitous justice of the absolute monarch that he apparently had in
mind, not the autonomous and inalienable justice of a free society.
The duties of the citizen, as he understood them, related not only to
acts, but also to thoughts. There was, to his mind, a simple body of
primary doctrine, and dissent from it was the foulest of crimes. No
man could have been more bitter against opponents, or more unfair to
them, or more ungenerous. In this department, indeed, even so gifted
a specialist in dishonorable controversy as Dr. Wilson has seldom
surpassed him. He never stood up to a frank and chivalrous debate.
He dragged herrings across the trail. He made seductive faces at the
gallery. He capitalized his enormous talents as an entertainer, his
rank as a national hero, his public influence and consequence. The
two great law-suits in which he was engaged were screaming burlesques
upon justice. He tried them in the newspapers before ever they were
called; he befogged them with irrelevant issues; his appearances in
court were not the appearances of a witness standing on a level with
other witnesses, but those of a comedian sure of his crowd. He was, in
his dealings with concrete men as in his dealings with men in the mass,
a charlatan of the very highest skill--and there was in him, it goes
without saying, the persuasive charm of the charlatan as well as the
daring deviousness, the humanness of naïveté as well as the humanness
of chicane. He knew how to woo--and not only boobs. He was, for all his
ruses and ambuscades, a jolly fellow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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