He did not take this conflict very seriously.

He was still reflected in the mirror of his own mind as a patriotic and a public-spirited citizen; but at the same time his ambition was to conquer, and he did not scruple to sacrifice both the law and the public weal to his own prosperity.

All unknowingly he began to testify to a growing and a decisive division between the two primary interests of American life,--between the interest of the individual business man and the interest of the body politic; and he became a living refutation of the amiable theories of the Jacksonian Democrat that the two must substantially coincide.

The business man had become merely a business man, and the conditions which had made him less of a politician had also had its effect upon the men whose business was that of politics.

Just as business had become specialized and organized, so politics also became subject to specialization and organization.