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.