SOCIETY DEPENDS ON MAN 291 



of the atmosphere : their pressure is constant ? jind L jwe live 



amongst them.^ Nevertheless, the responsibilities are 

 present, and must be constantly fulfilled, if the State and 



the city are to remain secure. One ill-considered act of 

 doubtful probity on the part of a Town Council may shake 

 public faith in it to its foundations and indefinitely lower 

 its powers for good for a long time to come. All the 

 great assets, which entitle our governors to rule and make 

 us their willing subjects, are easily squandered. It looks 



at times asif the dignity and honour of the Town Council 



were at the mercy of the crudest of its members ; so directly 



do they depend on the combined ffood taste and good sense 



ojjill concerned. It is so much more easy to destroy public 



confidence than to procIuce~o71Festore it. We cannot afford 



to have one Town Councillor whose tastes are low or 



whose ways are devious except at a public loss difficult 



to measure. We cannot j^ermit him even to substitute 



for personal selfishness the selfishness of a class, and become 

 'the tooToT an " Interest " or the mouthpiece of a " Trade " 



without danger to the community. Indeedi_one_ of the 



fhings I like least in our city life, and which gives me 



most misgivings, is^that the interests of a single trade 



should, to ,so_great^an_extent, decidejgur choice of rulers. 



But what we have said of the governors we may repeat 

 of those who elect them. Here, too, the stability of the 

 city and the State depends on the active loyalty of their 

 best citizens. I could imagine, I am not sure that at one 

 time I did not actually witness, an eruption upwards into 

 the light of the worst elements of our city life : an unseemly 

 combination of the bitter prejudices and of the sordid 

 motives of reckless men who cared little for the good name 

 of the city, with the ignorance, intemperance, selfishness 



T2 



