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Title: Twelve Causes of Dishonesty
Author: Henry Ward Beecher
Release Date: November 2, 2009 [EBook #30392]
Language: English
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THE CREATION STORY, by Honorable William E. Gladstone.
THE MESSAGE OF COMFORT, by Rt. Rev. Ashton Oxenden.
THE MESSAGE OF PEACE, by Rev. R. W. Church.
THE LORD'S PRAYER AND THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, by Dean Stanley.
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DIFFICULTIES, by Hannah Whitall Smith.
GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING, by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.
HAVE FAITH IN GOD, by Rev. Andrew Murray.
TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY, by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.
THE CHRIST IN WHOM CHRISTIANS BELIEVE, by Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks.
IN MY NAME, by Rev. Andrew Murray.
SIX WARNINGS, by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.
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POPULAR AMUSEMENTS, by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.
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Twelve Causes
of
Dishonesty
By Rev. Henry
Ward
Beecher
Philadelphia
Henry Altemus
COPYRIGHTED 1896
BY HENRY ALTEMUS
HENRY ALTEMUS, MANUFACTURER
PHILADELPHIA
TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY
Only extraordinary circumstances can give the appearance of dishonesty to
an honest man. Usually, not to _seem_ honest, is not to _be_ so. The
quality must not be doubtful like twilight, lingering between night and
day and taking hues from both; it must be day-light, clear, and effulgent.
This is the doctrine of the Bible: _Providing for honest things, not only
in the sight of the Lord_, BUT ALSO IN THE SIGHT OF MEN. In general it may
be said that no one has honesty without dross, until he has honesty
without suspicion.
We are passing through times upon which the seeds of dishonesty have been
sown broadcast, and they have brought forth a hundred-fold. These times
will pass away; but like ones will come again. As physicians study the
causes and record the phenomena of plagues and pestilences, to draw from
them an antidote against their recurrence, so should we leave to another
generation a history of moral plagues, as the best antidote to their
recurring malignity.
Upon a land,--capacious beyond measure, whose prodigal soil rewards labor
with an unharvestable abundance of exuberant fruits, occupied by a people
signalized by enterprise and industry--there came a summer of prosperity
which lingered so long and shone so brightly, that men forgot that winter
could ever come. Each day grew brighter. No reins were put upon the
imagination. Its dreams passed for realities. Even sober men, touched with
wildness, seemed to expect a realization of oriental tales. Upon this
bright day came sudden frosts, storms, and blight. Men awoke from gorgeous
dreams in the midst of desolation. The harvests of years were swept away
in a day. The strongest firms were rent as easily as the oak by lightning.
Speculating companies were dispersed as seared leaves from a tree in
autumn. Merchants were ruined by thousands; clerks turned adrift by ten
thousands. Mechanics were left in idleness. Farmers sighed over flocks and
wheat as useless as the stones and dirt. The wide sea of commerce was
stagnant; upon the realm of Industry settled down a sullen lethargy.
Out of this reverse swarmed an unnumbered host of dishonest men, like
vermin from a carcass. Banks were exploded,--or robbed,--or fleeced by
astounding forgeries. Mighty companies, without cohesion, went to pieces,
and hordes of wretches snatched up every bale that came ashore. Cities
were ransacked by troops of villains. The unparalleled frauds, which
sprung like mines on every hand, set every man to trembling lest the next
explosion should be under his own feet. Fidelity seemed to have forsaken
men. Many that had earned a reputation for sterling honesty were cast so
suddenly headlong into wickedness, that man shrank from man. Suspicion
overgrew confidence, and the heart bristled with the nettles and thorns of
fear and jealousy. Then had almost come to pass the divine delineation of
ancient wickedness: _The good man is perished out of the earth: and there
is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every
man his brother with a net. That they may do evil with both hands
earnestly, the prince and the judge ask for a reward: and the great man
uttereth his mischievous desire; so they wrap it up. The best of them is a
brier; the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge._ The world looked
upon a continent of inexhaustible fertility, (whose harvest had glutted
the markets, and rotted in disuse,) filled with lamentation, and its
inhabitants wandering like bereaved citizens among the ruins of an
earthquake, mourning for children, for houses crushed, and property buried
forever.
That no measure might be put to the calamity, the Church of God, which
rises a stately tower of refuge to desponding men, seemed now to have lost
its power of protection. When the solemn voice of Religion should have
gone over the land, as the call of God to guilty man to seek in him their
strength; in this time when Religion should have restored sight to the
blind, made the lame to walk, and bound up the broken-hearted, she was
herself mourning in sackcloth. Out of her courts came the noise of warring
sects; some contending against others with bitter warfare; and some,
possessed of a demon, wallowed upon the ground foaming and rending
themselves. In a time of panic, and disaster, and distress, and crime, the
fountain which should have been for the healing of men, cast up its
sediments, and gave out a bitter stream of pollution.
In every age, an universal pestilence has hushed the clamor of contention,
and cooled the heats of parties; but the greatness of our national
calamity seemed only to enkindle the fury of political parties.
Contentions never ran with such deep streams and impetuous currents, as
amidst the ruin of our industry and prosperity. States were greater
debtors to foreign nations, than their citizens were to each other. Both
states and citizens shrunk back from their debts, and yet more dishonestly
from the taxes necessary to discharge them. The General Government did not
escape, but lay becalmed, or pursued its course, like a ship, at every
furlong touching the rocks, or beating against the sands. The Capitol
trembled with the first waves of a question which is yet to shake the
whole land. New questions of exciting qualities perplexed the realm of
legislation, and of morals. To all this must be added a manifest decline
of family government; an increase of the ratio of popular ignorance; a
decrease of reverence for law, and an effeminate administration of it.
Popular tumults have been as frequent as freshets in our rivers; and like
them, have swept over the land with desolation, and left their filthy
slime in the highest places:--upon the press;--upon the legislature;--in
the halls of our courts;--and even upon the sacred bench of Justice. If
unsettled times foster dishonesty, it should have flourished among us.
And it has.
Our nation must expect a periodical return of such convulsions; but
experience should steadily curtail their ravages, and remedy their immoral
tendencies. Young men have before them lessons of manifold wisdom taught
by the severest of masters--experience. They should be studied; and that
they may be, I shall, from this general survey, turn to a specific
enumeration of the causes of dishonesty.
1. Some men find in their bosom from the first, a vehement inclination to
dishonest ways. Knavish propensities are inherent: born with the child and
transmissible from parent to son. The children of a sturdy thief, if taken
from him at birth and reared by honest men, would, doubtless, have to
contend against a strongly dishonest inclination. Foundlings and orphans
under public charitable charge, are more apt to become vicious than other
children. They are usually born of low and vicious parents, and inherit
their parents' propensities. Only the most thorough moral training can
overrule this innate depravity.
2. A child naturally fair-minded, may become dishonest by parental
example. He is early taught to be sharp in bargains, and vigilant for
every advantage. Little is said about honesty, and much upon shrewd
traffic. A dexterous trick, becomes a family anecdote; visitors are
regaled with the boy's precocious keenness. Hearing the praise of his
exploits, he studies craft, and seeks parental admiration by adroit
knaveries. He is taught, for his safety, that he must not range beyond the
law: that would be unprofitable. He calculates his morality thus: _Legal
honesty is the best policy_,--dishonesty, then, is a bad bargain--and
therefore wrong--everything is wrong which is unthrifty. Whatever profit
breaks no legal statute--though it is gained by falsehood, by unfairness,
by gloss; through dishonor, unkindness, and an unscrupulous conscience--he
considers fair, and says: _The law allows it._ Men may spend a long life
without an indictable action, and without an honest one. No law can reach
the insidious ways of subtle craft. The law allows, and religion forbids
men, to profit by others' misfortunes, to prowl for prey among the
ignorant, to over-reach the simple, to suck the last life-drops from the
bleeding; to hover over men as a vulture over herds, swooping down upon
the weak, the straggling, and the weary. The infernal craft of cunning
men, turns the law itself to piracy, and works outrageous fraud in the
hall of Courts, by the decision of judges, and under the seal of Justice.
3. Dishonesty is learned from one's employers. The boy of honest parents
and honestly bred, goes to a trade, or a store, where the employer
practises _legal_ frauds. The plain honesty of the boy excites roars of
laughter among the better taught clerks. The master tells them that such
blundering truthfulness must be pitied; the boy evidently has been
neglected, and is not to be ridiculed for what he could not help. At
first, it verily pains the youth's scruples, and tinges his face to frame
a deliberate dishonesty, to finish, and to polish it. His tongue stammers
at a lie; but the example of a rich master, the jeers and gibes of
shopmates, with gradual practice, cure all this. He becomes adroit in
fleecing customers for his master's sake, and equally dexterous in
fleecing his master for his own sake.
4. EXTRAVAGANCE is a prolific source of dishonesty. Extravagance,--which
is foolish expense, or expense disproportionate to one's means,--may be
found in all grades of society; but it is chiefly apparent among the rich,
those aspiring to wealth, and those wishing to be _thought_ affluent. Many
a young man cheats his business, by transferring his means to theatres,
race-courses, expensive parties, and to the nameless and numberless
projects of pleasure. The enterprise of others is baffled by the
extravagance of their family; for few men can make as much in a year as an
extravagant woman can carry on her back in one winter. Some are ambitious
of fashionable society, and will gratify their vanity at any expense. This
disproportion between means and expense soon brings on a crisis. The
victim is straitened for money; without it he must abandon his rank; for
fashionable society remorselessly rejects all butterflies which have lost
their brilliant colors. Which shall he choose, honesty and mortifying
exclusion, or gaiety purchased by dishonesty? The severity of this choice
sometimes sobers the intoxicated brain; and a young man shrinks from the
gulf, appalled at the darkness of dishonesty. But to excessive vanity,
high-life with or without fraud, is Paradise; and any other life
Purgatory. Here many resort to dishonesty without a scruple. It is at this
point that public sentiment half sustains dishonesty. It scourges the
thief of Necessity, and pities the thief of Fashion.
The struggle with others is on the very ground of honor. A wife led from
affluence to frigid penury and neglect; from leisure and luxury to toil
and want; daughters, once courted as rich, to be disesteemed when
poor,--this is the gloomy prospect, seen through a magic haze of
despondency. Honor, love and generosity, strangely bewitched, plead for
dishonesty as the only alternative to such suffering. But go, young man,
to your wife; tell her the alternative; if she is worthy of you, she will
face your poverty with a courage which shall shame your fears, and lead
you into its wilderness and through it, all unshrinking. Many there be who
went weeping into this desert, and ere long, having found in it the
fountains of the purest peace, have thanked God for the pleasures of
poverty. But if your wife unmans your resolution, imploring dishonor
rather than penury, may God pity and help you! You dwell with a sorceress,
and few can resist her wiles.
5. DEBT is an inexhaustible fountain of Dishonesty. The Royal Preacher
tells us: _The borrower is servant to the lender._ Debt is a rigorous
servitude. The debtor learns the cunning tricks, delays, concealments, and
frauds, by which slaves evade or cheat their master. He is tempted to make
ambiguous statements; pledges, with secret passages of escape; contracts,
with fraudulent constructions; lying excuses, and more mendacious
promises. He is tempted to elude responsibility; to delay settlements; to
prevaricate upon the terms; to resist equity, and devise specious fraud.
When the eager creditor would restrain such vagrancy by law, the debtor
then thinks himself released from moral obligation, and brought to a legal
game, in which it is lawful for the best player to win. He disputes true
accounts; he studies subterfuges; extorts provocatious delays; and harbors
in every nook, and corner, and passage, of the law's labyrinth. At length
the measure is filled up, and the malignant power of debt is known. It has
opened in the heart every fountain of iniquity; it has besoiled the
conscience; it has tarnished the honor; it has made the man a deliberate
student of knavery; a systematic practitioner of fraud; it has dragged him
through all the sewers of petty passions,--anger, hate, revenge, malicious
folly, or malignant shame. When a debtor is beaten at every point, and the
law will put her screws upon him, there is no depth in the gulf of
dishonesty into which he will not boldly plunge. Some men put their
property to the flames, assassinate the detested creditor, and end the
frantic tragedy by suicide, or the gallows. Others, in view of the
catastrophe, have converted all property to cash, and concealed it. The
law's utmost skill, and the creditor's fury, are alike powerless
now,--the tree is green and thrifty; its roots drawing a copious supply
from some hidden fountain.
Craft has another harbor of resort for the piratical crew of dishonesty;
viz.: _putting the property out of the law's reach by a fraudulent
conveyance_. Whoever runs in debt, and consumes the equivalent of his
indebtedness; whoever is fairly liable to damage for broken contracts;
whoever by folly, has incurred debts and lost the benefit of his outlay;
whoever is legally obliged to pay for his malice or carelessness; whoever
by infidelity to public trusts has made his property a just remuneration
for his defaults;--whoever of all these, or whoever, under any
circumstances, puts out of his hands property, morally or legally due to
creditors, is A DISHONEST MAN. The crazy excuses which men render to their
consciences, are only such as every villain makes, who is unwilling to
look upon the black face of his crimes.
He who will receive a conveyance of property, knowing it to be illusive
and fraudulent, is as wicked as the principal; and as much meaner, as the
tool and subordinate of villany is meaner than the master who uses him.
If a church, knowing all these facts, or wilfully ignorant of them,
allows a member to nestle in the security of the sanctuary; then the act
of this robber, and the connivance of the church, are but the two parts of
one crime.
6. BANKRUPTCY, although a branch of debt, deserves a separate mention. It
sometimes crushes a man's spirit, and sometimes exasperates it. The
poignancy of the evil depends much upon the disposition of the creditors;
and as much upon the disposition of the victim. Should _they_ act with the
lenity of Christian men, and _he_ with manly honesty, promptly rendering
up whatever satisfaction of debt he has,--he may visit the lowest places
of human adversity, and find there the light of good men's esteem, the
support of conscience, and the sustenance of religion.
A bankrupt may fall into the hands of men whose tender-mercies are cruel;
or his dishonest equivocations may exasperate their temper and provoke
every thorn and brier of the law. When men's passions are let loose,
especially their avarice whetted by real or imaginary wrong; when there is
a rivalry among creditors, lest any one should feast upon the victim more
than his share; and they all rush upon him like wolves upon a wounded
deer, dragging him down, ripping him open, breast and flank, plunging
deep their bloody muzzles to reach the heart and taste blood at the very
fountain;--is it strange that resistance is desperate and unscrupulous? At
length the sufferer drags his mutilated carcass aside, every nerve and
muscle wrung with pain, and his whole body an instrument of agony. He
curses the whole inhuman crew with envenomed imprecations; and
thenceforth, a brooding misanthrope, he pays back to society, by studied
villanies, the legal wrongs which the relentless justice of a few, or his
own knavery, have brought upon him.
7. There is a circle of moral dishonesties practised because the LAW
allows them. The very anxiety of law to reach the devices of cunning, so
perplexes its statutes with exceptions, limitations, and supplements, that
like a castle gradually enlarged for centuries, it has its crevices, dark
corners, secret holes and winding passages--an endless harbor for rats and
vermin, where no trap can catch them. We are villanously infested with
legal rats and rascals, who are able to commit the most flagrant
dishonesties with impunity. They can do all of wrong which is profitable,
without that part which is actionable. The very ingenuity of these
miscreants excites such admiration of their skill, that their life is
gilded with a specious respectability. Men profess little esteem for
blunt, necessitous thieves, who rob and run away; but for a gentleman who
can break the whole of God's law so adroitly, as to leave man's law
unbroken; who can indulge in such conservative stealing that his
fellow-men award him a rank among honest men for the excessive skill of
his dishonesty--for such a one, I fear, there is almost universal
sympathy.
8. POLITICAL DISHONESTY, breeds dishonesty of every kind. It is possible
for good men to permit single sins to co-exist with general integrity,
where the evil is indulged through ignorance. Once, undoubted Christians
were slave-traders. They might be, while unenlightened; but not in our
times. A state of mind which will _intend_ one fraud, will, upon
occasions, intend a thousand. He that upon one emergency will lie, will be
supplied with emergencies. He that will perjure himself to save a friend,
will do it, in a desperate juncture, to save himself. The highest Wisdom
has informed us that _He that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in
much_. Circumstances may withdraw a politician from temptation to any but
political dishonesty; but under temptation, a dishonest politician would
be a dishonest cashier,--would be dishonest anywhere,--in anything. The
fury which destroys an opponent's character, would stop at nothing, if
barriers were thrown down. That which is true of the leaders in politics,
is true of subordinates. Political dishonesty in voters runs into general
dishonesty, as the rotten speck taints the whole apple. A community whose
politics are conducted by a perpetual breach of honesty on both sides,
will be tainted by immorality throughout. Men will play the same game in
their private affairs, which they have learned to play in public matters.
The guile, the crafty vigilance, the dishonest advantage, the cunning
sharpness;--the tricks and traps and sly evasions; the equivocal promises,
and unequivocal neglect of them, which characterize political action, will
equally characterize private action. The mind has no kitchen to do its
dirty work in, while the parlor remains clean. Dishonesty is an
atmosphere; if it comes into one apartment, it penetrates into every one.
Whoever will lie in politics, will lie in traffic. Whoever will slander in
politics, will slander in personal squabbles. A professor of religion who
is a dishonest politician, is a dishonest Christian. His creed is a
perpetual index of his hypocrisy.
The genius of our government directs the attention of every citizen to
politics. Its spirit reaches the uttermost bound of society, and pervades
the whole mass. If its channels are slimy with corruption, what limit can
be set to its malign influence? The turbulence of elections, the virulence
of the press, the desperation of bad men, the hopelessness of efforts
which are not cunning, but only honest, have driven many conscientious men
from any concern with politics. This is suicidal. Thus the tempest will
grow blacker and fiercer. Our youth will be caught up in its whirling
bosom and dashed to pieces, and its hail will break down every green
thing. At God's house the cure should begin. Let the hand of discipline
smite the leprous lips which shall utter the profane heresy: _All is fair
in politics._ If any hoary professor, drunk with the mingled wine of
excitement, shall tell our youth, that a Christian man may act in politics
by any other rule of morality than that of the Bible; and that wickedness
performed for a party, is not as abominable, as if done for a man; or that
any necessity justifies or palliates dishonesty in word or deed,--let such
a one go out of the camp, and his pestilent breath no longer spread
contagion among our youth. No man who loves his country, should shrink
from her side when she groans with raging distempers. Let every Christian
man stand in his place; rebuke every dishonest practice; scorn a
political as well as a personal lie; and refuse with indignation to be
insulted by the solicitation of an immoral man. Let good men of all
parties require honesty, integrity, veracity, and morality in politics,
and there, as powerfully as anywhere else, the requisitions of public
sentiment will ultimately be felt.
9. A corrupt PUBLIC SENTIMENT produces dishonesty. A public sentiment, in
which dishonesty is not disgraceful; in which bad men are respectable, are
trusted, are honored, are exalted--is a curse to the young. The fever of
speculation, the universal derangement of business, the growing laxness of
morals, is, to an alarming extent, introducing such a state of things. Men
of notorious immorality, whose dishonesty is flagrant, whose private
habits would disgrace the ditch, are powerful and popular. I have seen a
man stained with every sin, except those which required courage; into
whose head I do not think a pure thought has entered for forty years; in
whose heart an honorable feeling would droop for very loneliness;--in evil
he was ripe and rotten; hoary and depraved in deed, in word, in his
present life and in all his past; evil when by himself, and viler among
men; corrupting to the young;--to domestic fidelity, a recreant; to common
honor, a traitor; to honesty, an outlaw; to religion, a hypocrite;--base
in all that is worthy of man, and accomplished in whatever is disgraceful;
and yet this wretch could go where he would; enter good men's dwellings,
and purloin their votes. Men would curse him, yet obey him; hate him and
assist him; warn their sons against him, and lead them to the polls for
him. A public sentiment which produces ignominious knaves, cannot breed
honest men.
Any calamity, civil or commercial, which checks the administration of
justice between man and man, is ruinous to honesty. The violent
fluctuations of business cover the ground with rubbish over which men
stumble; and fill the air with dust, in which all the shapes of honesty
appear distorted. Men are thrown upon unusual expedients; dishonesties are
unobserved; those who have been reckless and profuse, stave off the
legitimate fruits of their folly by desperate shifts. We have not yet
emerged from a period, in which debts were insecure; the debtor legally
protected against the rights of the creditor; taxes laid, not by the
requirements of justice, but for political effect; and lowered to a
dishonest insufficiency; and when thus diminished, not collected; the
citizens resisting their own officers; officers resigning at the bidding
of the electors; the laws of property paralyzed; bankrupt laws built up;
and stay-laws unconstitutionally enacted, upon which the courts look with
aversion, yet fear to deny them, lest the wildness of popular opinion
should roll back disdainfully upon the bench, to despoil its dignity, and
prostrate its power. General suffering has made us tolerant of general
dishonesty; and the gloom of our commercial disaster threatens to become
the pall of our morals.
If the shocking stupidity of the public mind to atrocious dishonesties is
not aroused; if good men do not bestir themselves to drag the young from
this foul sorcery; if the relaxed bands of honesty are not tightened, and
conscience intoned to a severer morality, our night is at hand,--our
midnight not far off. Woe to that guilty people who sit down upon broken
laws, and wealth saved by injustice! Woe to a generation fed upon the
bread of fraud, whose children's inheritance shall be a perpetual memento
of their fathers' unrighteousness; to whom dishonesty shall be made
pleasant by association with the revered memories of father, brother, and
friend!
But when a whole people, united by a common disregard of justice, conspire
to defraud public creditors; and States vie with States in an infamous
repudiation of just debts, by open or sinister methods; and nations exert
their sovereignty to protect and dignify the knavery of a Commonwealth;
then the confusion of domestic affairs has bred a fiend, before whose
flight honor fades away, and under whose feet the sanctity of truth and
the religion of solemn compacts are stamped down and ground into the dirt.
Need we ask the causes of growing dishonesty among the young, and the
increasing untrustworthiness of all agents, when States are seen clothed
with the panoply of dishonesty, and nations put on fraud for their
garments?
Absconding agents, swindling schemes, and defalcations, occurring in such
melancholy abundance, have at length ceased to be wonders, and rank with
the common accidents of fire and flood. The budget of each week is
incomplete without its mob and runaway cashier--its duel and defaulter;
and as waves which roll to the shore are lost in those which follow on, so
the villanies of each week obliterate the record of the last.
The mania of dishonesty cannot arise from local causes; it is the result
of disease in the whole community; an eruption betokening foulness of the
blood; blotches symptomatic of a disordered system.
10. FINANCIAL AGENTS are especially liable to the temptations of
Dishonesty. Safe merchants, and visionary schemers; sagacious adventurers,
and rash speculators; frugal beginners, and retired millionaires, are
constantly around them. Every word, every act, every entry, every letter,
suggests only wealth--its germ, its bud, its blossom, its golden harvest.
Its brilliance dazzles the sight; its seductions stir the appetites; its
power fires the ambition, and the soul concentrates its energies to obtain
wealth, as life's highest and only joy.
Besides the influence of such associations, direct dealing in _money_ as a
commodity, has a peculiar effect upon the heart. There is no property
between it and the mind;--no medium to mellow its light. The mind is
diverted and refreshed by no thoughts upon the quality of soils; the
durability of structures; the advantages of sites; the beauty of fabrics;
it is not invigorated by the necessity of labor and ingenuity which the
mechanic feels; by the invention of the artisan, or the taste of the
artist. The whole attention falls directly upon naked Money. The hourly
sight of it whets the appetite, and sharpens it to avarice. Thus, with an
intense regard of riches, steals in also the miser's relish of coin--that
insatiate gazing and fondling, by which seductive metal wins to itself
all the blandishments of love.
Those who _mean_ to be rich, often begin by imitating the expensive
courses of those who _are_ rich. They are also tempted to venture, before
they have means of their own, in brilliant speculations. How can a young
cashier pay the drafts of his illicit pleasures, or procure the seed, for
the harvest of speculation, out of his narrow salary? Here first begins to
work the leaven of death. The mind wanders in dreams of gain; it broods
over projects of unlawful riches; stealthily at first, and then with less
reserve; at last it boldly meditates the possibility of being dishonest
and _safe_. When a man can seriously reflect upon dishonesty as a possible
and profitable thing, he is already deeply dishonest. To a mind so
tainted, will flock stories of consummate craft, of effective knavery, of
fraud covered by its brilliant success. At times, the mind shrinks from
its own thoughts, and trembles to look down the giddy cliff on whose edge
they poise, or over which they fling themselves like sporting sea-birds.
But these imaginations will not be driven from the heart where they have
once nested. They haunt a man's business, visit him in dreams, and
vampire-like, fan the slumbers of the victim whom they will destroy. In
some feverish hour, vibrating between conscience and avarice, the man
staggers to a compromise. To satisfy his conscience he refuses to _steal_;
and to gratify his avarice, he _borrows_ the funds;--not openly--not of
owners--not of men: but of the till--the safe--the vault!
He resolves to restore the money before discovery can ensue, and pocket
the profits. Meanwhile, false entries are made, perjured oaths are sworn,
forged papers are filed. His expenses grow profuse, and men wonder from
what fountain so copious a stream can flow.
Let us stop here to survey his condition. He flourishes, is called
prosperous, thinks himself safe. Is he safe, or honest? He has stolen, and
embarked the amount upon a sea over which wander perpetual storms; where
wreck is the common fate, and escape the accident; and now all his chance
for the semblance of honesty, is staked upon the return of his
embezzlements from among the sands, the rocks and currents, the winds and
waves, and darkness, of tumultuous speculation. At length dawns the day of
discovery. His guilty dreams have long foretokened it. As he confronts the
disgrace almost face to face, how changed is the hideous aspect of his
deed, from that fair face of promise with which it tempted him!
Conscience, and honor, and plain honesty, which left him when they could
not restrain, now come back to sharpen his anguish. Overawed by the
prospect of open shame, of his wife's disgrace, and his children's
beggary, he cows down, and slinks out of life a frantic suicide.
Some there be, however, less supple to shame. They meet their fate with
cool impudence; defy their employers; brave the court, and too often with
success. The delusion of the public mind, or the confusion of affairs is
such, that, while petty culprits are tumbled into prison, a cool,
calculating and immense scoundrel is pitied, dandled and nursed by a
sympathizing community. In the broad road slanting to the rogue's retreat,
are seen the officer of the bank, the agent of the state, the officer of
the church, in indiscriminate haste, outrunning a lazy justice, and
bearing off the gains of astounding frauds. Avarice and pleasure seem to
have dissolved the conscience. _It is a day of trouble and of perplexity
from the Lord._ We tremble to think that our children must leave the
covert of the family, and go out upon that dark and yeasty sea, from whose
wrath so many wrecks are cast up at our feet. Of one thing I am certain;
if the church of Christ is silent to such deeds, and makes her altar a
refuge to such dishonesty, the day is coming when she shall have no altar,
the light shall go out from her candlestick, her walls shall be desolate,
and the fox look out at her windows.
11. EXECUTIVE CLEMENCY, by its frequency, has been a temptation to
Dishonesty. Who will fear to be a culprit when a legal sentence is the
argument of pity, and the prelude of pardon? What can the community expect
but growing dishonesty, when juries connive at acquittals, and judges
condemn only to petition a pardon; when honest men and officers fly before
a mob; when jails are besieged and threatened, if felons are not
relinquished; when the Executive, consulting the spirit of the community,
receives the demands of the mob, and humbly complies, throwing down the
fences of the law, that base rioters may walk unimpeded, to their work of
vengeance, or unjust mercy? A sickly sentimentality too often enervates
the administration of justice; and the pardoning power becomes the
master-key to let out unwashed, unrepentant criminals. They have fleeced
us, robbed us, and are ulcerous sores to the body politic; yet our heart
turns to water over their merited punishment. A fine young fellow, by
accident, writes another's name for his own; by a mistake equally
unfortunate, he presents it at the bank; innocently draws out the large
amount; generously spends a part, and absent-mindedly hides the rest.
Hard-hearted wretches there are, who would punish him for this! Young men,
admiring the neatness of the affair, pity his misfortune, and curse a
stupid jury that knew no better than to send to a penitentiary, him, whose
skill deserved a cashiership. He goes to his cell, the pity of a whole
metropolis. Bulletins from Sing-Sing inform us daily what Edwards[1] is
doing, as if he were Napoleon at St. Helena. At length pardoned, he will
go forth again to a renowned liberty!
If there be one way quicker than another, by which the Executive shall
assist crime, and our laws foster it, it is that course which assures
every dishonest man, that it is easy to defraud, easy to avoid arrest,
easy to escape punishment, and easiest of all to obtain a pardon.
12. COMMERCIAL SPECULATIONS are prolific of Dishonesty. Speculation is the
risking of capital in enterprises greater than we can control, or in
enterprises whose elements are not at all calculable. All calculations of
the future are uncertain; but those which are based upon long experience
approximate certainty, while those which are drawn by sagacity from
probable events, are notoriously unsafe. Unless, however, some venture, we
shall forever tread an old and dull path; therefore enterprise is allowed
to pioneer new ways. The safe enterpriser explores cautiously, ventures at
first a little, and increases the venture with the ratio of experience. A
speculator looks out upon the new region, as upon a far-away landscape,
whose features are softened to beauty by distance; upon a _hope_, he
stakes that, which, if it wins, will make him; and if it loses, will ruin
him. When the alternatives are victory, or utter destruction, a battle
may, sometimes, still be necessary. But commerce has no such alternatives;
only speculation proceeds upon them.
If the capital is borrowed, it is as dishonest, upon such ventures, to
risk, as to lose it. Should a man borrow a noble steed and ride among
incitements which he knew would rouse up his fiery spirit to an
uncontrollable height, and borne away with wild speed, be plunged over a
precipice, his destruction might excite our pity, but could not alter our
opinion of his dishonesty. He borrowed property, and endangered it where
he knew that it would be uncontrollable.
If the capital be one's own, it can scarcely be risked and lost, without
the ruin of other men. No man could blow up his store in a compact street,
and destroy only his own. Men of business are, like threads of a fabric,
woven together, and subject, to a great extent, to a common fate of
prosperity or adversity. I have no right to cut off my hand; I defraud
myself, my family, the community, and God; for all these have an interest
in that hand. Neither has a man the right to throw away his property. He
defrauds himself, his family, the community in which he dwells; for all
these have an interest in that property. If waste is dishonesty, then
every risk, in proportion as it approaches it, is dishonest. To venture,
without that foresight which experience gives, is wrong; and if we cannot
foresee, then we must not venture.
Scheming speculation demoralizes honesty, and almost necessitates
dishonesty. He who puts his own interests to rash ventures, will scarcely
do better for others. The Speculator regards the weightiest affair as only
a splendid game. Indeed, a Speculator on the exchange, and a Gambler at
his table, follow one vocation, only with different instruments. One
employs cards or dice, the other property. The one can no more foresee the
result of his schemes, than the other what spots will come up on his
dice; the calculations of both are only the chances of luck. Both burn
with unhealthy excitement; both are avaricious of gains, but careless of
what they win; both depend more upon fortune than skill; they have a
common distaste for labor; with each, right and wrong are only the
accidents of a game; neither would scruple in any hour to set his whole
being on the edge of ruin, and going over, to pull down, if possible, a
hundred others.
The wreck of such men leaves them with a drunkard's appetite, and a
fiend's desperation. The revulsion from extravagant hopes, to a certainty
of midnight darkness; the sensations of poverty, to him who was in fancy
just stepping upon a princely estate; the humiliation of gleaning for
cents, where he has been profuse of dollars; the chagrin of seeing old
competitors now above him, grinning down upon his poverty a malignant
triumph; the pity of pitiful men, and the neglect of such as should have
been his friends,--and who were, while the sunshine lay upon his
path,--all these things, like so many strong winds, sweep across the soul
so that it cannot rest in the cheerless tranquility of honesty, but _casts
up mire and dirt_. How stately the balloon rises and sails over
continents, as over petty landscapes! The slightest slit in its frail
covering sends it tumbling down, swaying widely, whirling and pitching
hither and thither, until it plunges into some dark glen, out of the path
of honest men, and too shattered to tempt even a robber. So have we seen a
thousand men pitched down; so now, in a thousand places may their wrecks
be seen. But still other balloons are framing, and the air is full of
victim-venturers.
If our young men are introduced to life with distaste for safe ways,
because the sure profits are slow; if the opinion becomes prevalent that
all business is great, only as it tends to the uncertain, the extravagant,
and the romantic; then we may stay our hand at once, nor waste labor in
absurd expostulations of honesty. I had as lief preach humanity to a
battle of eagles, as to urge honesty and integrity upon those who have
_determined_ to be rich, and to gain it by gambling stakes, and madmen's
ventures.
All the bankruptcies of commerce are harmless compared with a bankruptcy
of public morals. Should the Atlantic ocean break over our shores, and
roll sheer across to the Pacific, sweeping every vestige of cultivation,
and burying our wealth, it would be a mercy, compared to that ocean-deluge
of dishonesty and crime, which, sweeping over the whole land, has spared
our wealth and taken our virtue. What are cornfields and vineyards, what
are stores and manufactures, and what are gold and silver, and all the
precious commodities of the earth, among beasts?--and what are men, bereft
of conscience and honor, but beasts?
We will forget those things which are behind, and hope a more cheerful
future. We turn to you, YOUNG MEN!--All good men, all patriots, turn to
watch your advance upon the stage, and to implore you to be worthy of
yourselves, and of your revered ancestry. Oh! ye favored of Heaven! with a
free land, a noble inheritance of wise laws, and a prodigality of wealth
in prospect,--advance to your possessions!--May you settle down, as did
Israel of old, a people of God in a promised and protected land;--true to
yourselves, true to your country, and true to your God.
Footnote:
[1] Monroe Edwards, a notorious forger.--ED.
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