SERVICES THAT SOCIETY NEEDS 299 



first for the city and the State, and justice will come the 



sooner.^ Does the trade in drink combine its vast powers 



and direct them on the choice of public representatives 

 in the City Council or Imperial Parliament so as to possess 

 instruments of its own purposes, tools for its own ends? 

 Is it true that there can be, oreven actually was inscribed 



on their banner, "Our Trade our Politics" ? Then I 



call it an immoral motto, and say that those who profess 



and act upon it areenemies of the public good. 



It is no answer to say that the extravagant assertion of 

 their class " rights" is but a reply to the extravagant denial 

 of them by others, even although the answer is not void 

 of all truth. Nor is it an answer to say that where every 

 class presses for its own claims, justice will arrive to all as 

 the result of their collision. It is not true. The just 

 equipoise of rights never comes in this way. Mere class 



legislation is never right. The State can provide for a 



class, or protect itsjnterests, only when by doing so it is; 



providing for jjidLprotecting its own more universal goocL 



What will arrivejjy such methods is care for the strong 

 and neglect of the weak, the conversion of the State into 



a^warring arena^jmd theultimate triumph of the clamorous^ 

 It is not the strife of interests that maintains the equipoise 



of the State or city, but its just men. 



If the ordinary citizen wants work to do for society he 

 will find employment in combating this spirit, and exhibit- 

 ing in his speech and conduct a nobler view of the State 

 and of the ends it is meant to serve. 



But he will obtain a closer and clearer view of his duties 

 if he listens to his own criticisms of the city or of the 

 State. For it is a characteristic of the imperfectly social- 

 ized nature, that is, of our stunted moral life, that it sees 



