" I do not hesitate to maintain, that, of all the devices for introducing
comiption into politics and the government which could emanate from the
unconscious ingenuity of the most stupid legislator, not one could be found
equal to the existing system of railroad supervision and regulation — the sys*
tem so dear to the opponents of State ownership. Upon what does that sys-
tem depend ? It depends upon thi^, that one min is to cegulate and supervise
the affairs and property of another. Is it consistent with ideas of compoion
sense, is it within the bounds of reason, to suppose that the man who owns
will not do his best to control the man who -regulates ? We know perfectly
well how rapidly the movement in this direction is now going on. The sway
of the railroad- man and- the lobbyist is notorious in half the Legislatures of the
country. And why are they there? They are there because your false system
of legislation has effected a separation between the ownership of a thing and
its regulation, and he who owns the thing knoWs he must also own the Legis-
lature which regulates the thing. And just so long as you pursue this false
systemunder correct principles; just so long as you deceive yourselves with
the idea that you are not meddling, all the time that you are doing your best to
reduce meddling to a system; just so long as you make one man own a thing,
and empower another to regulate the value out of it— just so long legislative
venality and political corruption will increase. And yet the tendency to ag-
gravatiB this artificially created conflict of interest — the disposition to make
inevitable this marriage of individual greed with legislative venality, is not less
apparent than it is alarming. All over the country^ more elsewhere than in
Massachusetts, we see legislators year by }rear, insensibly and as a matter of
course, assuming the functions of irresponsible boards of general railroad di-
rectors. And by the term irresponsible, I mean not amendable to that cau-
tion which is inseparable from ownership. 