328 
BruncJcen—Private and Public Business. 
rectors. But even in those cases the directors are in a different 
relation to the stockholders from that of the officers of a gov¬ 
ernment to the citizens, as will appear in a moment. In a 
private enterprise the interests of the owners as a whole and 
those of the managing agents must be identical. When they 
cease to be so the enterprise itself must come to an end, or the 
agents must give their places to others. An attempt on the 
part of the agents to keep themselves in power notwithstanding 
such conflict of interests is prevented or punished by the law as 
a species of fraud. Equally, in a private enterprise, the inter¬ 
ests of all the proprietors must be in harmony, or the enter¬ 
prise must cease. The law enforces the dissolution in case of 
conflicting interests. This is true in cases where the property 
is in the hands of a corporation as well as where it is owned by 
a partnership. The legal mode of procedure only is different in 
the two cases. 
In the case of public administration it is very different. 
There not only the interests of the body of owners and the man¬ 
aging agents may be, and often are, different, but the interests of 
different sections of the proprietors are usually in conflict. But 
the fact that the private interests of a public officer are opposed 
to those of the community he serves, is not of itself ground for 
his removal. The law expects him to disregard his individual 
interests on pain of punishment and disgrace. Far less is a 
conflict of interests within the body of the citizens cause for 
dissolution of the commonwealth, in the same sense in which it 
is cause for the dissolution of a private partnership. Such 
conflicts of interest, however, within the community are not 
the exception, but the rule, even in a small commonwealth like 
a rural township, much more so in a large city?" or a state. They 
grow out of differences ’in wealth, occupation, nationality, reli¬ 
gion, party affiliations, and a score of other things which divide 
large bodies of men. 
Another circumstance which renders the position of the direc¬ 
tor of a corporation, as a representative of his stockholders, 
different from that of a public officer, is this: In most cases a 
director is a large stockholder himself; not infrequently his 
entire wealth consists in his stock. Consequently he has a very 
