J. C.
1920.
PART I--LETTERS
BOOKS--1905.
I.
"I have not read this author's books, and if I have read them I have
forgotten what they were about."
These words are reported as having been uttered in our midst not a
hundred years ago, publicly, from the seat of justice, by a civic
magistrate. The words of our municipal rulers have a solemnity and
importance far above the words of other mortals, because our municipal
rulers more than any other variety of our governors and masters represent
the average wisdom, temperament, sense and virtue of the community. This
generalisation, it ought to be promptly said in the interests of eternal
justice (and recent friendship), does not apply to the United States of
America. There, if one may believe the long and helpless indignations of
their daily and weekly Press, the majority of municipal rulers appear to
be thieves of a particularly irrepressible sort. But this by the way. My
concern is with a statement issuing from the average temperament and the
average wisdom of a great and wealthy community, and uttered by a civic
magistrate obviously without fear and without reproach.
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