From Mark Twain, January, 1868:
It is disgraceful, in Congress, or anybody at all, to question the honor and virtue of the highest tribunal in our country. If we cannot believe in the utter and spotless purity of the Judges of so sacred a tribunal, we ought at least to have the pride to keep such a belief unexpressed. I cannot conceive it possible that a man could occupy so royal a position as a Supreme Judge, and be base enough to let his decisions be tainted by any stain of his political predilections. I hate to hear people say this Judge will vote so and so, because he is a Democrat -- and this one so and so because he is a Republican. It is shameful. The Judges have the Constitution for their guidance; they have no right to any politics save the politics of rigid right and justice when they are sitting in judgment upon the great matters that come before them. If the Reconstruction Acts are Constitutional, we ought to believe they will sustain them; if they are not, we ought to hope they well annul them. When we become capable of believing our Supreme Judges can so belittle themselves and their great office as to read the Constitution of the United States through blurring and distorting spectacles, it will be time for us to put on sackcloth and ashes.
Posted by Bobby Farouk at May 10, 2005 08:19 AMPresumably that was more obviously a piece of satire in Sam's time.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at May 10, 2005 08:45 AMI couldn't tell if it was satire.
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at May 10, 2005 08:56 AMWell, here's hoping.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at May 10, 2005 09:12 AMYa never know with later Twain. (When was this written?) The posthumous *Letters From The Earth* collection is pretty grim. All that stuff about the Old Testament fathers whupping the hell out of the Midianites seemed to depress him genuinely though he was still trying to be funny about it.
Dunno. There's this American style of irony crossed with Pollyannism in which people behave with outward cheerfulness as though their society were actually constructed the way it claims to be, with the conscious or half-conscious idea that behaving that way tends just a little bit more toward making it so. You can kind of tell it isn't genuine simple faith because nobody ever seems exactly surprised when the reality falls short.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at May 10, 2005 11:37 AMWritten in 1868, while he was working as a correspondent with the Alta California. So it's post-Celebrated Frog, but before he became a novelist/celebrity. Reading the whole piece, you see he hasn't come into his full powers yet.
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at May 10, 2005 11:49 AMSo he hadn't come into his full grumpiness yet either. Hm. Yeah, maybe at that point in his life he meant it wholeheartedly.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at May 10, 2005 01:55 PM