Chapter XIII: Section 2: makes clear that the States must be considered separate (3)

In the famous case of _United States_ v. _Butler_, (297 U. S. 1), holding that the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1935 exceeded the power vested in the Congress to regulate commerce, the Supreme Court divided violently--but both the majority and the minority, in their discussions of judicial power and responsibility, made the same points. “The only power the court has,” said the majority, “if such it may be called, is the power of judgment. This court neither approves nor condemns any legislative policy. Its delicate and difficult office is to ascertain and declare whether the legislation is in accordance with, or in contravention of, the provisions of the Constitution; and, having done that, its duty ends.” Harlan Stone, in the magnificent dissent in which Brandeis and Cardozo joined, expressed the responsibility of the court in this fashion:

The power of courts to declare a statute unconstitutional is
subject to two guiding principles of decision which ought never
to be absent from judicial consciousness. One is that courts are
concerned only with the power to enact statutes, not with their
wisdom. The other is that while unconstitutional exercise of power
by the executive and legislative branches of the government is
subject to judicial restraint, the only check upon our own exercise
of power is our own sense of self-restraint. For the removal of
unwise laws from the statute books, appeal lies not to the courts
but to the ballot and to the processes of democratic government.

Did the Supreme Court, in the _School Segregation Cases_, have the power to abolish segregation by placing its own contemporary construction on the Fourteenth Amendment? By casting aside Stone’s “sense of self-restraint,” and by substituting their own notions of what was right for the plain history of what was constitutional, the judges could assume that naked power. In the end, that was what they did--in violation of precepts they themselves had pronounced eloquently in other cases.

Mr. Justice Black, for example, was solidly on the side of judicial tradition in 1946, in _Morgan_ v. _Virginia_ (328 U. S. 373). The question was whether a Virginia law, requiring separate seats for white and colored passengers on buses, placed an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce. A majority of the court thought it did, but Black, though he agreed entirely with the result of the majority’s ruling, protested strongly that the power to regulate commerce was a power vested in the Congress and not in the courts. Yet in a series of cases, the court had nullified State laws just as it was nullifying Virginia’s enactment in the _Morgan_ case. “I thought then, and still believe,” said Black, “that in these cases the court was assuming the role of a ‘super-legislature’ in determining matters of governmental policy.” Where was Mr. Justice Black in May 1954?

Mr. Justice Frankfurter has expounded many times upon the obligation upon the court never to exceed its judicial powers. The question in _Board of Education_ v. _Barnette_ (319 U. S. 634), was whether West Virginia could compel its public school children to salute the flag. Five times, the Supreme Court had held that such a requirement was not in violation of the Constitution. Now, in 1943, with the shift of two justices, the holding was reversed. Frankfurter’s eloquent dissent provides a moving statement of the philosophy by which judges should be guided in contemplating their judicial power:

One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in
history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed
by our Constitution. Were my purely personal attitude relevant,
I should wholeheartedly associate myself with the general
libertarian views in the court’s opinion, representing as they
do the thought and action of a lifetime. But as judges we are
neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic. We owe
equal attachment to the Constitution and are equally bound by our
judicial obligations whether we derive our citizenship from the
earliest or the latest immigrants to these shores. As a member of
this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of
policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish
them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.... It can never
be emphasized too much that one’s own opinion about the wisdom or
evil of a law should be excluded altogether when one is doing one’s
duty on the bench. The only opinion of our own even looking in that
direction that is material is our opinion whether legislators could
in reason have enacted such a law.

Much as he detested the West Virginia statute, Frankfurter found it impossible to deny that reasonable legislators could have passed the flag-salute law. He was guided to this conclusion by “the light of all the circumstances” and by “the history of this question in this court.” Thirteen Justices of the Supreme Court in other years had found such laws within the constitutional authority of the States. In view of this “impressive judicial sanction,” how could the power be now prohibited to the States? In the past, said Frankfurter:

this court has from time to time set its views of policy against
that embodied in legislation by finding laws in conflict
with what was called “the spirit of the Constitution.” Such
undefined destructive power was not conferred on this court by
the Constitution. Before a duly enacted law can be judicially
nullified, it must be forbidden by some explicit restriction upon
political authority in the Constitution. Equally inadmissible is
the claim to strike down legislation because to us as individuals
it seems opposed to the “plan and purpose” of the Constitution.
That is too tempting a basis for finding in one’s personal views
the purposes of the Founders.

The uncontrollable power wielded by this court brings it very
close to the most sensitive areas of public affairs. As appeal
from legislation to adjudication becomes more frequent, and its
consequences more far-reaching, judicial self-restraint becomes
more and not less important, lest we unwarrantably enter social and
political domains wholly outside our concern.

What had become of these views on the part of Mr. Justice Frankfurter in May 1954? By that time, not merely thirteen Justices, but more than thirty members of the court over a period of fifty-eight years had upheld the constitutionality of racially separate schools. More impressive judicial sanction scarcely could be imagined. And what is to be said of an opinion, in a highly sensitive area of public affairs, not even rationalized by “the spirit of the Constitution” or the “plan and purpose” of the Constitution, but rather by “the effect of segregation on public education” and “the extent of psychological knowledge”? These provided the rationale of the _Brown_ decision, but Mr. Justice Frankfurter did not open his mouth in dissent.

Did the court have the power to do what it did? Mr. Justice Douglas, another of the nine, in other days had warned that long-run stability is best achieved when social and economic problems of the State and nation are kept under political management of the people. Writing in _49 Columbia Law Review_ some years ago, he observed sagely that “it is when a judiciary with life tenure seeks to write its social and economic creed into the Charter that instability is created.” In May 1954, Mr. Justice Douglas did his bit to create just that instability.

Did the court have the power? That was the essence of Question 3. It was the court’s most profound inquiry, for it probed the very soul of judicial limitation and responsibility. Serious consideration of Question 3 would have required of the judges a respect for the wisdom and integrity of scores of judges and hundreds of State and Federal legislators, all equally sworn to uphold the Constitution, who had preceded them. The question should have suggested the utmost restraint, the most selfless exercise of judicial discipline. “Is it within the judicial power, in construing the amendment, to abolish segregation in public schools?”

“What is truth?” said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.

VI

The _School Segregation Cases_ came up for reargument before the Supreme Court on December 8, 1953. By this time, the Kansas case was moot (it is one of the many ironies of the story that the school cases should be styled as _Brown_ v. _Board of Education of Topeka_, taking their name from a controversy that had been settled by the time the opinion came down), but the cases from Virginia, South Carolina, and Delaware were still hotly at issue. The cast of lawyers was the same, and again, questions from the bench seemed to indicate a continuing division within the court.

Counsel for the Negro plaintiffs, grappling with Question 1, attempted to show that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended by its framers and adopters to have a “broad, general scope.” John W. Davis and T. Justin Moore, carrying the brunt of argument for the South, relied upon the more tangible history of what actually happened in terms of racially separate schools. Davis placed particular emphasis upon the action of the Southern States in creating separate school systems, without objection from Congress, even as they ratified the amendment. Sumner and his fellow radicals might not have wanted to challenge such Northern allies as Pennsylvania and Ohio, but “if there were any place where sponsors of the amendment would have blown the bugle for mixed schools, surely it would have been in those eight States of Reconstruction legislation.”

Frankfurter kept asking the various attorneys to explain why the Congress itself never had adopted legislation to prohibit the States from maintaining racially separate schools. Defense counsel said the Congress had no power to do so; attorneys for the Negro plaintiffs said Congress had the power, but opponents of segregation never had had the votes. Frankfurter put an embarrassing question to J. Lee Rankin, who as Assistant Attorney General had joined forces with the NAACP. “Realistically,” Frankfurter suggested, “the reason this case is here is that action couldn’t be attained from Congress. Certainly it would be much stronger from your point of view if Congress had acted, wouldn’t it?”

Rankin agreed, but insisted that the court could achieve the desired end by judicial pronouncement as well as the Congress could achieve it by legislative action. Frankfurter persisted, taking judicial notice of eighty-five years of segregation in Washington:

“Is it to be said fairly that not only did Congress not exercise the power under Section 5 with reference to the States but, in a realm in which it has exclusive authority, it enacted legislation to the contrary? Are you saying that legislation does not mean anything but what it does? It just segregates, that’s all.”

“Well, not exactly,” Rankin replied. “You have to find a conscious determination by Congress that segregation was permitted under the Fourteenth Amendment.”

“You think legislation by Congress is like the British Empire--something that is acquired in a fit of absent-mindedness?”

“I wouldn’t make that charge before this court,” said Rankin stiffly, “and I don’t want to be quoted in that manner.”

Nevertheless, Frankfurter’s questions exposed the weakness of the plaintiffs’ historical justifications. Rankin’s astonishing idea--that Congress never really had thought much about what it was doing, during all the years since 1868 in which it had provided annually for segregated schools in Washington--was echoed in feeble attempts to explain away the judicial precedents. Jackson and Reed asked Rankin how he could account for decisions of Northern courts, in such cases as _Garnes_, _King_, and _Cory_, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment did not reach public schools. Rankin replied weakly that “apparently there was no detailed study of the history and background of the Fourteenth Amendment.” This was too much for Jackson: “These men lived with the thing,” he said; “they didn’t have to go to books.”

The question that most troubled Jackson, however, was the key question of judicial power. He wondered aloud if it were appropriate “for the court, after all that has intervened, to exercise this power instead of leaving it to Congress.” Thurgood Marshall, for the plaintiffs, insisted that theories of a dynamic, growing Constitution abundantly justified the court in reversing Plessy and in placing its own contemporary construction on the Amendment. John W. Davis, for the defense, strongly disagreed: “At some time to every principle comes a moment of repose, when it has been so often announced, so confidently relied upon, so long continued, that it passes the limits of judicial discretion and disturbance.”

Painstakingly, counsel for the Southern States called the roll of precedents supporting--or not disturbing--the long-established doctrine of “separate but equal.” The _Plessy_ case of 1896 had been followed in December 1899 by _Cumming_ v. _Richmond County Board of Education_ (175 U. S. 528). Here the facts were that a Georgia county had closed its Negro high school and required local Negro high school students to go into Augusta for schooling, in order to convert the high school to the needs of three-hundred elementary pupils. The Negro high school pupils sought an injunction to upset this arrangement. And though the denial of equal facilities locally might seem plain, a _unanimous_ Supreme Court found no merit in the Negroes’ claim. Some of the students might be inconvenienced by the requirement that they attend one of the three Negro high schools in nearby Augusta, but their inconvenience had to be set against the needs of the elementary children. Further, nothing constructive would be gained by closing the white high school merely because the Negro high school was no longer operating. “Under the circumstances disclosed,” said the court, “we cannot say that this action ... was, _within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment_, a denial by the State to the plaintiffs and those associated with them of the equal protection of the law, or of any privileges belonging to them as citizens of the United States. The education of the people in schools maintained by State taxation is a matter belonging to the respective States, and any interference on the part of Federal authority with the management of such schools cannot be justified except in the case of a clear and unmistakable disregard of rights secured by the supreme law of the land.” [Emphasis supplied.] It is curious, one may note in passing, that persons who so reverently admire Mr. Justice Harlan’s dissent of 1896 in _Plessy_ customarily fail altogether to acknowledge that it was Mr. Justice Harlan who spoke in 1899 for a unanimous court in _Cumming_.

The court’s pronouncement in _Cumming_ was cited the following year in the New York Court of Appeals (161 N. Y. 598), when Negro petitioners challenged the right and power of Queens Borough to maintain separate schools. The New York court refused to disturb the system: “It is equal school facilities and accommodations that are required to be furnished, and not equal social opportunities.”

In November 1908, the Supreme Court considered a suit brought by Berea College against the Commonwealth of Kentucky (211 U. S. 45). Berea, a private college, had been operating as a racially integrated institution. A State law was enacted making it unlawful for any corporation chartered in Kentucky to maintain a private school on such a basis. On the grounds that the law was within Kentucky’s power to regulate Kentucky corporations, a majority of the Supreme Court held the law valid. Harlan dissented warmly. He thought Berea’s right to admit pupils of its own choosing to its classrooms was “a liberty inherent in the freedom secured by fundamental law,” but he did not wish to be misunderstood: “Of course what I have said has no reference to regulations prescribed for public schools, established at the pleasure of the State and maintained at the public expense.”

Six years later, the generic question of “separate but equal” was again before the Supreme Court, in _McCabe_ v. _Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company_ (235 U. S. 151). A Negro passenger had sued to halt enforcement of an Oklahoma law requiring racial separation on coaches. The trial court had dismissed the suit by calling attention to _Plessy_ and saying that the power of the States to require separate but equal accommodations “could no longer be considered an open question.” Said Hughes for a unanimous Supreme Court: “There is no reason to doubt the correctness of that conclusion.”

Thirteen years elapsed. Membership on the court changed. On November 21, 1927, when the court decided _Gong Lum_ v. _Rice_ (275 U. S. 78), Taft was Chief Justice; his brothers included such giants of the law as Holmes, Brandeis, and Stone. The question of the power of the States to maintain racially separate but equal schools was put squarely before the court. Mississippi had insisted that a Chinese child, Martha Lum, attend a Negro high school in Bolivar County instead of a white high school. This was what Taft said, speaking for a _unanimous_ court:

The question here is whether a Chinese citizen of the United States
is denied equal protection of the laws when he is classed among
the colored races and furnished facilities for education equal to
that offered to all, whether white, brown, yellow or black. Were
this a new question, it would call for very full argument and
consideration, but we think that it is the same question which has
been many times decided to be within the constitutional power of
the State legislature to settle without intervention of the Federal
courts under the Federal Constitution.... The decision is within
the discretion of the State in regulating its public schools,
_and does not conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment_. [Emphasis
supplied.]

The _Gong Lum_ case was in 1927. Eleven years later the Supreme Court dealt with a suit brought by Lloyd Gaines, a Negro, seeking admission to the law school of the University of Missouri (305 U. S. 337). The _Gaines_ case is important, because it sometimes is said that it heralded in 1938 the end of “separate but equal” in 1954. It did no such thing. The State of Missouri then had no law school for Negroes; the practice was to pay tuition fees, out of State, for the few Negro students seeking legal education. Other Negro college students attended Lincoln University in St. Louis, where Missouri sought to fulfill its obligation to provide the same general advantages of higher education for Negroes that it provided for whites by furnishing equal facilities in separate schools. Chief Justice Hughes said for the court that this was a method, “_the validity of which has been sustained by our decisions_.” He was sympathetic to Missouri’s plan to build Lincoln University into an institution genuinely equal to the University of Missouri at Columbia. “But commendable as is that action, the fact remains that instruction in law for Negroes is not now afforded by the State, either at Lincoln University or elsewhere.” The court therefore ordered Gaines admitted to the Missouri Law School. McReynolds dissented, with Butler joining him. They felt Missouri’s offer to pay Gaines’ tuition in a nearby law school of good standing would provide the student with abundant opportunity to study law “if perchance that is the thing really desired.” In attempting in good faith to meet the constitutionally sanctioned requirements of separate but equal, said McReynolds, “the State should not be unduly hampered through theorization inadequately restrained by experience.”

Three other cases that were reviewed in the oral argument before the Supreme Court in December 1953 also dealt with higher education at the graduate-school level. The circumstances in _Sipuel_ v. _Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma_ (332 U. S. 630) paralleled the circumstances of the _Gaines_ case; the court entered no more than a _per curiam_ order directing that _Gaines_ be followed. On June 5, 1950, the last two cases were decided: _Sweatt_ v. _Painter_ (339 U. S. 629) and _McLaurin_ v. _Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education_ (339 U. S. 637). In both opinions, the court, speaking through Chief Justice Vinson, was careful to emphasize that it was following _Gaines_ (that is, that it was following “separate but equal”) and was not reexamining _Plessy_ at all. In the _Sweatt_ case, Texas had attempted to establish a Negro law school at Austin that would be the equal of its University of Texas Law School in Houston. Relying upon the “intangibles that make for greatness in a law school,” the court held such equality impossible of attainment. Similarly, in the _McLaurin_ case, in which Oklahoma had sought to segregate a Negro graduate in the use of library and cafeteria facilities, Vinson held for the court that “_under these circumstances_,” the Fourteenth Amendment precluded any distinction in treatment of students based upon race.

Regardless of one’s views on the rightness or wrongness of segregation in the public schools, how are these precedents fairly to be characterized? Plainly, they form one unbroken chain, reaching back to the very ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment: _Garnes_ in Ohio, _Stoutmeyer_ in Nevada, _Ward_ in California, _Cory_ in Indiana, _Bertonneau_ in Louisiana, _King_ in New York, _Lehew_ in Missouri, _Plessy_ in Louisiana, _Cumming_ in Georgia, _Berea_ in Kentucky, _McCabe_ in Oklahoma, _Gong Lum_ in Mississippi, _Gaines_ in Missouri--in every one of these, extending from 1871 to 1938, the doctrine of “separate but equal” had been judicially sanctioned as not in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. And in _Sipuel_, _McLaurin_, and _Sweatt_ the doctrine had simply been ruled not applicable in the peculiar circumstances of graduate-school instruction.

This was the chain the court snapped in the _School Segregation Cases_. Six months after the case had been reargued, on May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Warren spoke for a unanimous court in overruling and discarding this uniform interpretation of more than eighty years. The text of the court’s opinion appears in the Appendix, along with its companion decision in the _Bolling_ case from the District of Columbia. Here it will be seen that the court blandly dismissed the massive evidence of “intent” with a regal hand: The evidence was “inconclusive.” Then, disdaining every rule of jurisprudence which says that law cases should be decided on points of law, the court delivered itself of some homilies on the importance of education: “Today, education is perhaps the most important function of State and local governments.” Everyone must have an education: “It is the very foundation of good citizenship. It is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values.” Said the court:

We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of
children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though
the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal,
deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational
opportunities? We believe that it does.

That was the key paragraph. The court went on to assert that the “intangible considerations” it had found to be important in graduate-school instruction apply with added force to children in grade and high schools. “To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of _Plessy_, said the court, “this finding is amply supported by modern authority.” And the court inserted its famous Footnote 11 to prove it.

This footnote directed the inquisitive reader to seven sources. The first was a paper prepared by Kenneth B. Clark, “The Effect of Prejudice and Discrimination on Personality Development,” delivered at the 1950 White House Conference on Children and Youth; Clark, a professor of psychology at the College of the City of New York, was then at least presumptively on the payroll of the NAACP--he was “social science consultant for the NAACP’s legal and educational division.” A second source was “Personality in the Making,” by Helen Leland Witmer and Ruth Kotinsky. The third was a report of a survey conducted for the American Jewish Congress in 1947 by Max Deutscher and Isidor Chein. They sent a questionnaire to 849 social scientists, asking, first in the affirmative and then in the negative, “[Do you] believe that enforced segregation has (has not) a detrimental psychological effect on members of the racial or religious groups which are segregated?” A second question, similarly phrased, sought the social scientists’ opinions on whether such segregation has detrimental effects on the majority group imposing the segregation. All told, 517 of those queried returned the questionnaire (32 of the 517 were from the South). Not surprisingly, 90 per cent of the 517 obligingly answered Ja to the first question and 83 per cent said Ja to the second. Had there been an opportunity to put Deutscher and Chein on a witness stand, counsel for the South might have sought clarification on what was meant by “enforced,” what by “segregation,” and what by “detrimental,” and rebuttal witnesses might have been summoned to testify on the effects, detrimental or otherwise, of enforced integration on the majority group.

The fourth authority cited by the court was a paper by Chein in a publication of such large obscurity and small circulation that few persons can have examined it: “What are the Psychological Effects of Segregation under Conditions of Equal Facilities,” in Volume 3 of the _International Journal of Opinion and Attitude Research_ (1949). Fifth on the list was “Educational Costs in Discrimination and National Welfare,” by Theodore Brameld, then a professor of educational philosophy at the University of Minnesota. The sixth reference was to Edward Franklin Frazier’s _The Negro in the United States_. Frazier is a Negro sociologist, professor of sociology at Howard University, who served as chairman of UNESCO’s committee of experts on race.

And finally, said the court, “see generally Myrdal, _An American Dilemma_.”

“We conclude,” said the court, “that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. _Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal_.” [Emphasis supplied.] That final sentence contained perhaps the greatest irony of them all, for unless words have lost their meaning, the court here decreed equality for the Negro by finding the Negro innately not equal. What else did the court mean? Here we are told, on the authority of the most eminent court in the world, that if one-hundred Negro pupils are put to study in one building, and one-hundred white pupils are put to study in an identical building, the first group of pupils, who have been segregated solely on the basis of race, will make up a school _inherently_ unequal to the other. “Inherently” comes from the Latin _haerere_, to stick; it means “firmly infixed; belonging by nature.” And when the court concluded that separate schools for Negroes are inherently unequal, it made a judicial finding of fact with which a great many Southerners would find themselves in wry agreement.

That was the substance of the _Brown_ decision. Because of the predictable impact of the ruling and the great variety of local conditions, the court asked for reargument on the formulation of specific decrees. A year later, on May 31, 1955, a supplementary opinion (this also appears in full in the Appendix) sent the cases back to the trial courts with instructions to enter decrees ordering “the parties to these cases admitted to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed.” By that time, Kansas had abandoned segregation altogether in its schools; so had the District of Columbia; so had Delaware over much of the State. In the course of time, Prince Edward County, Virginia, was to abandon public education rather than submit to compulsory desegregation of its schools. The public schools of Clarendon County, S. C., are still operating as I write, in the spring of 1962, as completely segregated as they were in the spring of 1954. The new Negro schools are bright and shining and consolidated, and some of the children of the original plaintiffs of 1951, it is said, are placidly attending them.

What was wrong with the _Brown_ decision? The Sibley Commission in Georgia summarized the South’s protest in two sweeping sentences:

We consider this decision utterly unsound on the facts; contrary
to the clear intent of the Fourteenth Amendment; a usurpation of
legislative function through judicial process; and an invasion of
the reserved rights of States. We further consider that, _putting
aside the question of segregation_, this decision presents a clear
and present danger to our system of constitutional government,
because it places what the court calls “modern authority” in
sociology and psychology above the ancient authority of the law,
and because it places the transitory views of the Supreme Court
above the legislative power of Congress, the settled construction
of the Constitution, and the reserved sovereignty of the several
States. [Emphasis supplied.]

If the student of American government can do as the Sibley commission suggests, and put aside the question of segregation--eliminate all the emotional overtones of “prejudice” and “discrimination” and “second-class citizens”--he will get a clearer picture of the most disturbing aspect of the _School Segregation Cases_. One of the most cherished myths of American tradition, as strong and as insubstantial as any doctrine of religion, is that ours is “a government of laws, not men.” Viewed coldly and nakedly, the proposition is palpably absurd; wine is wine, and bread is bread. But by some devout act of political transubstantiation, the faith of the American people has imbued this doctrine with a special venerability: We have been reared to believe that law exists metaphysically, above and beyond the mortal men who enforce it. As an institution, the high court commands respect, not for the nine frail vessels beneath the robes, but out of deference to the higher, holier grail they represent.

And this was what the court shattered in the _Brown_ case: The myth, the grail, the mystery of the law. “The judicial function is that of interpretation,” Sutherland once said; “it does not include the power of amendment under the guise of interpretation.” Cardozo said the same thing: “We are not at liberty to revise while professing to construe.” Hughes said it too: “The power of this court is not to amend, but only to expound the Constitution as an agency of the sovereign people who made it and who alone have authority to alter or unmake it.”

But the court disdained these ancient and elementary rules. “By its decision in the _Brown_ case,” former Justice Byrnes has said, “the court did not interpret the Constitution. It really amended the Constitution.” This the court had no legal or moral right to do. It had only the power to do it--the absolute power, in Acton’s famous phrase, that left unrestrained, corrupts absolutely.