The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1910-06-04
THE AIM OF GOVERNMENT.

Win Governor Charles E. Hughes of New York
was appointed to the supreme bench by President
! Taft he was congratulated by the whole country.
In reply to the congratulations of friends ne de-
livered an anomaly on the aims of government,
which, coming from one whose life has been given
to legislative and executive affairs and one who
Is about to enter upon judicial career Is at once
Interesting and instructive. In his reply to the
congratulations of his friends he said: Il have
sought to give utterance to what l believe to Dc
tie insistent public demand for such improvements
in methods and laws as will tend fully to in
sure faithful and impartial administration, and to
portect the public interest against the artllces OF
those who seek to use the power of government for
private advantage"
This utterance may not seem very different from
the utterances of other men in public life yet 1t Is
different in this regard; No single set of men is
set apart for attack The rich idler, the nancier,
the labor leader the professional CRATER, and all
the others who have been singled out for attack
by othe rworthy statesmen, are excluded 1nd1v1d-
ually yet they are included collectively, if they
seek to use the power of government fer private
advantage The political developments of the past
ten years have served to promote the notion that
only people on the face of the earth from whom
the public needs protection are the rich malefac-
tors trying by every hook and crook to get richer
at the expense of the public. The country has had
so much of this that it is sated-yes, than
sated Now the truth is, that about one man in
every thousand is not consciously and strenuously
working for a profit. The remaining nine hundred
and ninety-nine, high and low, rich and poor,
striving through the night and the day for that
which in the end will prove as satisfying the
lack of it seems to them now. And it is not the
rich alone who trying to acquire financial ease
by some perversion of the administration of the
laws and it is not the rich alone who seek to profit
at the expense of the people by swinding the gov
eminent. Neither is it the poor alone, nor is it
the labor leader who seek to get their hands into
the public treasury to the power of government
to their advantage
The aim of government, then is not to curb the
avarice Of the rich the poor or the we-to-do, but
to maintain an absolute-or near absolute
possible mpartiality in the administration of
governmental affairs. The aim is not to restrain
the rich or the poor or the well-todo, but to re-
strain the dishonest men, the thieves and the graft
ers no matter from what station in life they may
spring. To protect the public interest from those
who seek to use the power of government for pri-
vate advantage is not the expression of dema-
gogue, but it embodies a truth which the public is
coming to recognize more clearly as the years go
by. 1t is only of the many indications that
the governor of the Empire state has given that
show his eminent fitness for the position on the
supreme bench to which he has been appointed by
the President