108 Foundations of Democratic Dogma
any longer afford to leave the issue obscure. It does not
matter very much—in the long run—whether we quite
frankly deny this democratic dogma of inalienable rights
and the whole conception of absolute values that underlies
it, or whether we subtly undermine it by the doctrine of rela-
tivism and naturalism which I have described. Personally I
prefer frankness and even cynicism, for then we know where
we really stand.
As a youth I was taught a hard lesson which I have never
forgotten. I happened to speak of Gladstone in the pres-
ence of a typical fine old straightforward English conserva-
tive, as “the grand old man.” With a snort he replied,
“grand old humbug.” I have never forgotten that it is pos-
sible that liberals may be humbugs. But just as because pa-
triotism is the last refuge of scoundrels it does not follow
that most patriots are not decent God-fearing men, so be-
cause liberalism is the favorite refuge of humbugs it does
not follow that most liberals are not forthright and sincere.
I spoke earlier of a justice of the Supreme Court who de-
nied all such basal values. It is only fair that I should also
speak of one who asserts them. Justice Cardozo has pointed
out the dependence of legal concepts on ethics, showing that
“legal concepts when divorced from ethics, tend to become
tyrants and fruitful parents of injustice.” But he goes fur-
ther than this. He points out that, when conflicts in the law
appear, the resolution of these conflicts always indicates that
a certain scale of values is presupposed and certain principles
of precedence acknowledged; a scale, moreover, which how-
ever it may be strained and pressed out of shape in the strug-
gle for existence and power, always tends to reassert itself.
For this order or scale is in the very nature of things.