Politics & Power Quote by Stephen J. Field

Field is doing something judges rarely admit to doing out loud: writing a political brief in the register of prophecy. “Assault upon capital” isn’t a neutral description of policy disputes; it’s a martial metaphor that casts regulation, taxation, or labor agitation as violence. Once you accept that framing, every democratic demand becomes a projectile. The real work of the line is preemptive: it tries to make the first reform look indistinguishable from the last revolution.

The architecture of the sentence is a classic slippery-slope escalator. “But the beginning,” “stepping-stone,” “larger and more sweeping” - a controlled sequence of inevitabilities. Field isn’t arguing that a particular measure is unconstitutional or unwise; he’s arguing that conceding anything to “the poor” will convert elections into class warfare. That’s not analysis so much as threat assessment, and it reflects a late-19th-century elite anxiety that mass politics, newly organized labor, and populist movements could redefine property rights as negotiable rather than sacred.

The subtext is equally pointed: if political contests become “war,” then the judiciary can pose as the last defensive fortification for “capital.” Field’s wording anticipates the logic that would soon animate Lochner-era jurisprudence, where protecting contract and property was treated as protecting civilization itself. It’s also a rhetorical maneuver to delegitimize opponents: once reformers are recast as an invading force, compromise looks like surrender, and inequality becomes the price of “order.”