CHARACTER TESTING

CHARACTER TESTING OFFICIALS A test of moral character must be imposed on public office seekers, akin to those tests imposed upon lawyers or doctors entering their professions. A public trust is being discharged. Such a trust must not be entrusted to persons of low, questionable or even worse, despicable characters! This idea comes from KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1853). Therein she writes: "Legree is introduced not for the sake of vilifying masters as a class, but for the sake of bringing to the minds of the honorable Southern men, who are masters, a very important feature in the system of slavery, upon which, perhaps, they have never reflected. It is this: 'that no Southern law requires any test of CHARACTER from the man to whom the absolute power of master is granted.' "In the second part of this book it will be shown that the legal power of the master amounts to an absolute despotism over body and soul; and that there is no protection for slave 's life or limb, his family relations, his conscience, nay, more, his eternal interests, but the CHARACTER of the master." P.39 In contemporary American society, 2017-2018, character tests may well have dissuaded some people from seeking elected or appointed offices, involving the public trust .