You and I, as men of the world, will agree that if the American people prefer or find it more serviceable to cherish bribery as a federal institution, no one will interfere. The fact that it is ethically wrong is interesting to real philosophers and to the clergy, but bribery will continue to flourish like a bay-tree if it is the sort of thing which the American people like. Now, to all outward appearances they find it, if not grateful and comforting, at least endurable and convenient. Certainly, except among the class of people whom you would be apt to stigmatize as "holier than thous," there is comparatively little interest taken in the question. The mass of the community seek refuge behind the agreeable fiction that the abuse doesn't exist or exists only in such degree as to be unimportant. Many of these people know that this is false, but they will not admit that they think so in order not to make such doings familiar, just as their custom is to speak of legs as lower limbs in order not to bring a blush to the cheek of the young person. For thorough-going hypocrisy--often unconscious, but still hypocrisy--no one can equal a certain kind of American. It is so much easier in this world, where patting on the back is the touch-stone of preferment and popularity, to think that everything is as serene as the surface indicates, though you are secretly sure that it is not. How much more convenient to be able to say truthfully, "I have no knowledge of the facts, so don't bother me," than to be constantly wagging the head and entertaining doubts concerning the purity of one's fellow-citizens, and so making enemies.