Post-Prandial Philosophy by Grant Allen

"Alas, how easily things go wrong! " says Dr. George MacDonald. And all the world over, when things do go wrong, the natural and instinctive desire of the human animal is -- to find a scapegoat. When the great French nation in the lump embarks its capital in a hopeless scheme for cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Panama, and then finds out too late that Nature has imposed insuperable barriers to its completion on the projected scale -- what does the great French nation do, in its collective wisdom, but turn round at once to rend the directors? It cries, "A Mazas! " just as in '71 it cried "Bazaine a la lanterne! " I don't mean to say the directors don't deserve all they have got or ever will get, and perhaps more also; I don't mean to deny corruption extraordinary in many high places; as a rule the worst that anybody alleges about anything is only a part of what might easily be alleged if we were all in the secret. Which of us, indeed, would 'scape whipping?

But what I do mean is, that we should never have heard of Reinach or Herz, of the corruption and peculation, at all if things had gone well. It is the crash that brought them out. The nation wants a scapegoat. "Ain't nobody to be whopped for this 'ere? " asked Mr. Sam Weller on a critical occasion. The question embodies the universal impulse of humanity.