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.