He,
therefore, looks upon the evasion of a law devised for public
protection, but inimical to him, as innocent or even meritorious.
If an election be lost, and the legislature, which has been chosen by
the majority, cannot be pacified by money, but passes some act which
promises to be annoying, the first instinct of the capitalist is to
retain counsel, not to advise him touching his duty under the law, but
to devise a method by which he may elude it, or, if he cannot elude it,
by which he may have it annulled as unconstitutional by the courts. The
lawyer who succeeds in this branch of practice is certain to win the
highest prizes at the bar. And as capital has had now, for more than one
or even two generations, all the prizes of the law within its gift, this
attitude of capital has had a profound effect upon shaping the American
legal mind. The capitalist, as I infer, regards the constitutional form
of government which exists in the United States, as a convenient method
of obtaining his own way against a majority, but the lawyer has learned
to worship it as a fetich. Nor is this astonishing, for, were written
constitutions suppressed, he would lose most of his importance and much
of his income.
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