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… is from page 285 of the 1997 Johns Hopkins University Press edition of H.L. Mencken’s marvelous 1956 collection, Minority Report [2]; by “Dogberries,” Mencken refers to the bureaucrats appointed to run and staff all the many new U.S. government agencies during the New Deal:
Very few of the Dogberries, high or low, had been men of any genuine dignity or authority before they were given office by presidential fiat. For every one who had been in a responsible position, won by experience and ability, there were at least fifty who had been college tutors, charity racketeers, unsuccessful lawyers, petty jobholders, and other such nonentities…. It was simply not in human nature for such ignoble fellows, once they had the club of government in their hands, to refrain from using it recklessly.
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