Here’s a quote from the next page of Sin and Society.
As society grows complex, it can be harmed in more ways.
Those who rack and rend this social order do worse than hurt particular individuals; they wound society itself.
- The men who steal elections,
- who make merchandise of the law,
- who make justice a mockery,
- who pervert good custom,
- who foil the plain public intent,
- who pollute the wells of knowledge,
- who dim ideals for hire,
-these are, in sober truth, the chiefest sinners.
They are cutting the guy ropes that keep the big tent from collapsing on our heads. They should be the first to feel the rod. To spare them because such sins furnish no writhing victim to stir our indignation is as if a ship’s passengers should lynch pilferers, but release miscreants caught boring with augers in the vessel’s bottom.
The book is online here.