Each one among
them has still a real responsibility; if a wrong has been done, none
of them can say he did not do it; he is as much a participant as an
accomplice is in an offence: if there has been legal criminality
they may all be punished legally, and their punishment needs not be
less severe than if there had been only one person concerned. But it
is not so with the penalties, any more than with the rewards, of
opinion: these are always diminished by being shared. Where there
has been no definite legal offence, no corruption or malversation,
only an error or an imprudence, or what may pass for such, every
participator has an excuse to himself and to the world, in the fact
that other persons are jointly involved with him. There is hardly
anything, even to pecuniary dishonesty, for which men will not feel
themselves almost absolved, if those whose duty it was to resist and
remonstrate have failed to do it, still more if they have given a
formal assent.
In this case, however, though responsibility is weakened, there
still is responsibility: every one of those implicated has in his
individual capacity assented to, and joined in, the act. Things are
much worse when the act itself is only that of a majority- a Board,
deliberating with closed doors, nobody knowing, or, except in some
extreme case, being ever likely to know, whether an individual
member voted for the act or against it.
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