The Daily News. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1913. THE CORPORATE CONSCIENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 215, 18 February 1915, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1913. THE CORPORATE CONSCIENCE.

Professor Crete, the groat historian of Crecce, in liis account of the trial and condemnation of Socrates, makes the profoundly true remark: "Bodies of men will often do things from which the individuals composing them would shrink with horror." He says that amongst the members of the Athenian Senate who condemned Socrates to death, there were many humane and honorable men. Nevertheless they concurred in passing an inhuman and immoral sentence because they sank their sense, of personal responsibility in their conduct in their corporate capacity. This incident is a [.•articular illustration of the general law that everywhere there is a corporate conscience which threatens to paralyse if not to extinguish the sacred authority of the personal conscience. Every nation, every profession, every social order has r. corporate conscience of its own, the truth of which its members no more dream of questioning than they do the time of the town clock or the length of the yard measure. it seems to many men presumption, almost treason, to dare set the voice of an individual conscience against the verdict of the cor- ] orate conscience of the community to which they belong. They simply reason that the community is more likely to be right in its opinion than an individual like themselves, and bow in silence to a standard of morality which their individual consciences would have repelled if left to themselves. For centuries the nobles and aristocracy of France looked down upon tile peasants as an inferior race, possessing neither social nor civic rights. For nearly a century the corporate conscience of America pronounced negro shivery an institution so sacred that it was almost blasphemy to call it in question. To this day the corporate conscience (1 f Germany accepts the absolutism of the Kaiser as suhmis-ively as it does ilie authority of Cod. Hut wars, revolutions and disaster ruthlessly drag the cor],orate conscience of a nation, caste, ".- clique before the bar of a higher tribunal. The French Revolution submerged the corporate conscience of the aristocrats in a sea of blood. The execution of l harles the Fin-t trampled the corporate conscience of the otuarts in the dust. The victory of the North in thi: great civil war of America branded the corporate conscience of the slaveholders with execration and infamy. And the great war in Europe to-day is slowly but surely confronting the corporate conscience of Oerman militarism with an august and awful authority, in the sight of which it must before long read its doom. lb-. Clifford, in a recent article on '-Public Opinion and the \'ar." in The Contemporary, says:— "Ccrv.uuy has new not a friend in ..ic ! •iMirhl. and she knows it. How long it I ;: ■■■'y lie b fore :-ho ;■■■ cniepMvd no one j can say, but she is condemned already \

!i> tlio court from whose verdict there is no appeal—the public opinion of the world." The corporate conscience of a nation, a political party, a millsary ciiipie, is, after all, Imt the court ot the. lower magistrate, which can only commit the prisoner for trial. The Public Opinion of the world is tile supreme court which pronounces his linal sentence. The, corporate eon science of a nation or a party may ue biassed by prejudice, corrupted by covotousness, poisoned by ambition. But high above this petty, paltry corporate conscience of party the evolution of the ages is steadily raising the j public opinion of the world, out of which the corrupt elements are being gradually eliminated, into which are being woven the purer elements, which give it an authority unassailable because it is absolutely impartial. There is a Public Opinion of the world to which passion is nothing, and. justice everything. That Public Opinion has already condemned, slavery. It has alrtfidy condemned tyranny. It has already condemned treachery. It has already condemned the violation of treaties. The authority of that Public .Opinion is growing stronger every century, because it is growing saner, sounder, more strictly impartial, more inflexibly just. The verdicts of that court in the past are such as enable us to .anticipate its judgments in' the future. It cannot stultify and degrade itself by lowering its standard at the dictation of bluster and blurt". To tho judgments of that court we confidently commit our cause. IWO know what its outcome will be because the preliminary stages of its investigation have already been published. It has tried the corporate conscience of Germany, and pronounced it worthless, partly because that conscience is the result of the false pessimistic, philosophy of writers like Carlowitz, Nietchze, and Bcrnhardi, partly because of the effect of the bullying and browbeating of tile military party in Clermany. The Pub-ic (.'pinion of the world has torn to shreds the party opinion composed of such corrupt materials. For its final verdict «V can all'ord to wait with perfect confidence. The cause, that is backed by the Public Opoiion of the world must eventually prevail.