Whenever the people begin to clamor for justice upon their exploiters, the politicians, who make themselves valuable to the exploiters by cozening the people into giving them office, begin by denying that the people want anything; when the clamor grows so loud that this pretense is no longer tenable, they hasten to say, “The people are right, and something must be done.  Unfortunately, there is no way of legally doing anything at present, and we must be patient until a way is discovered.”  Way after way is suggested, only to be dismissed as “dangerous” or “impractical” or “unconstitutional.”  The years pass; the clamor persists, becomes imperious.  The politicians pass a law that has been carefully made unconstitutional.  This gives the exploiters several years more of license.  Finally, public sentiment compels the right kind of law; it is passed.  Then come the obstacles to enforcement.  More years of delay; louder clamor.  A Stillwater is put in charge of the enforcement of the law; a case is made, a trial is had, and the evidence is so incomplete or the people’s lawyers so poorly matched against the lawyers of the exploiters that the case fails, and the administration is able to say, “You see, we’ve done our best, but the rascals have escaped!” The case against certain Western railway thieves had reached the stage at which the only way the exploiters could be protected from justice was by having a mock trial; and Stillwater had put Craig forward as the conductor of this furious sham battle, had armed him with a poor gun, loaded with blanks.  “We’ll lose the case,” calculated Stillwater; “we’ll save our friends, and get rid of Craig, whom everybody will blame —­the damned, bumptious, sophomoric blow-hard!”

What excuse did Stillwater make to himself for himself in this course of seeming treachery and assassination?  For, being a man of the highest principles, he would not deliberately plan an assassination as an assassination.  Why, his excuse was that the popular clamor against the men “who had built up the Western country” was wicked, that he was serving his country in denying the mob “the blood of our best citizens,” that Josh Craig was a demagogue who richly deserved to be hoist by his own petar.  He laughed with patriotic glee as he thought how “Josh, the joke” would make a fool of himself with silly, sophomoric arguments, would with his rude tactlessness get upon the nerves of the finicky old Justices of the Supreme Court!

As Craig had boasted right and left of the “tear” he was going to make, and had urged everybody he talked with to come and hear him, the small courtroom was uncomfortably full, and not a few of the smiling, whispering spectators confidently expected that they were about to enjoy that rare, delicious treat—­a conceited braggart publicly exposed and overwhelmed by himself.  Among these spectators was Josh’s best friend, Arkwright, seated beside Margaret Severence, and masking his satisfaction over the impending catastrophe