DUTY
By Samuel Smiles
CHAPTER THREE
HONESTY - TRUTH
Honesty and truthfulness go well together. Honesty is truth, and
truth is honesty. Truth alone may not constitute a great man, but
it is the most important element of a great character. It gives
security to those who employ him, and confidence to those who serve
under him. Truth is the essence of principle, integrity, and
independence. It is the primary need of every man. Absolute
veracity is more needed now than at any former period in our
history.
Lying, common though it be, is denounced even by the liar himself.
He protests that he is speaking the truth, for he knows that truth
is universally respected, whilst lying is universally condemned.
Lying is not only dishonest, but cowardly. "Dare to be true," said
George Herbert; "nothing can ever need a lie." The most mischievous
liars are those who keep on the verge of truth. They have not the
courage to speak out the fact, but go round about it, and tell what
is really untrue. A lie which is half the truth is the worst of
lies.
There is a duplicity of life which is quite as bad as verbal
falsehood. Actions have as plain a voice as words. The mean man is
false to his profession. He evades the truth that he professes to
believe. He plays at double dealing. He wants sincerity and
veracity. The sincere man speaks as he thinks, believes as he
pretends to believe, acts as he professes to act, and performs as
he promises.
"Other forms of practical contradiction are common," says Mr.
Spurgeon; "some are intolerantly liberal; others are ferocious
advocates for peace, or intemperate on intemperance. We have known
pleaders for generosity who were themselves miserably stingy. We
have heard of persons who have been wonderful sticklers for 'the
truth' - meaning thereby a certain form of doctrine - and yet they
have not regarded the truth in matters of buying and selling or
with regard to the reputations of their neighbours, or the
incidents of domestic life."*
(* ' The Bible and the Newspaper,' 1878 )
Lying is one of the most common and conventional of vices. It
prevails in what is called "society." Not at home is the
fashionable mode of reply to a visitor. Lying is supposed to be so
necessary to carry on human affairs that it is tacitly agreed to.
One lie may be considered harmless, another slight, another
unintended. Little lies are common. However tolerated, lying is
more or less loathsome to every pure-minded man or woman. "Lies,"
says Ruskin, "may be light and accidental, but they are an ugly
soot from the smoke of the pit, and it is better that our hearts
should be swept clean of them, without our care as to which is
largest or blackset."
"Lying abroad for the benefit of one's country" used to be the
maxim of the diplomatist. Yet a man should care more for his word
than for his life. When Regulus was sent by the Carthaginians,
whose prisoner he was, to Rome, with a convoy of ambassadors to sue
for peace, it was under the condition that he should return to his
prison if peace were not effected. He took the oath, and swore that
he would come back.
When he appeared at Rome he urged the senators to persevere in the
war, and not to agree to the exchange of prisoners. That involved
his return to captivity at Carthage. The senators, and even the
chief priest, held that as his oath had been wrested from him by
force, he was not bound to go. "Have you resolved to dishonour me?"
asked Regulus. "I am not ignorant that death and tortures are
preparing for me; but what are these to the shame of an infamous
action, or the wounds of a guilty mind? Slave as I am to Carthage,
I have still the spirit of a Roman. I have sworn to return. It is
my duty to go. Let the gods take care of the rest." Regulus
returned to Carthage, and died under torture.
"Let him that would live well," said Plato, "attain to truth, and
then, and not before, he will cease from sorrow." Let us also cite
a passage from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius: "He who acts unjustly
acts impiously; for since the universal nature has made rational
animals for the sake of one another, to help one another according
to their deserts, but in no way to injure one another, he who
transgresses his will is clearly guilty of impiety towards the
highest divinity. And he, too, that lies is guilty of impiety to
the same divinity, from the universal nature of all things that
are; and all things that are have a relation to all things that
come into existence. And further, this universal nature is named
Truth, and is the prime cause of all things that are true. He,
then, who lies intentionally is guilty of impiety, inasmuch as he
acts unjustly by deceiving; and he also who lies unintentionally,
inasmuch as he is at variance with the universal nature, and
inasmuch as he disturbs the order by fighting against the nature of
the world; for he fights against it, who is moved of himself to
that which is contrary to truth, for he has received powers from
nature, through the neglect of which he is not able now to
distinguish falsehood from truth. And, indeed, he who pursues
pleasure as good, and avoids pain as evil, is guilty of
impiety."*
(* 'Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.' Translated by George
Long, M.A.' pp.144-5.)
Truth and honesty show themselves in various ways. They
characterize the men of just dealing, the faithful men of business,
the men who do not deceive you to their own advantage. Honesty is
the plainest and humblest manifestation of the principle of truth.
Full measures, just weights, true samples, full service, strict
fulfilment of engagements, are all indispensable to men of
character.
Take a common case. Sam Foote had reason to complain of the
shortness of the beer served to him at dinner. He called the
landlord, and said to him: "Pray, sir, how many butts of beer do
you draw in a month?" "Ten, sir," replied the publican "And would
you like to draw eleven if your could?" "Certainly, sir." "Then I
will tell you how," said Foote: " fill your measure! "
But the case goes farther than this. We complain of short weights
and adulteration of goods. We buy one thing and get another. But
goods must sell; if with a profit, so much the better. If the
dealer is found out, the customer goes elsewhere. M. Le Play, when
he visited England many years ago, observed with great pleasure the
commercial probity of English manufacturers. "They display," he
said, "a scrupulous exactitude in the quantity and quality of their
foreign consignments."
Could he say the same now? Have we not heard in public courts of
the depreciation of our manufactures - of cotton loaded with china
clay, starch, magnesium, and zinc? We have seen the loading, and
therefore know what it is. The cotton becomes mildewed,
discoloured, and therefore unsaleable. The mildew is a fungus
which, when developed by moisture, lives and grows upon the starch.
China was one of the many marts for English-made cotton. But when
the mildew appeared, the trade vanished.
There is a Chinese proverb to the effect that, "the conjuror does
not deceive the man who beats the gong for him." The Chinaman is as
great a deceiver as we are. He puts iron filings into his tea, and
water into his silk. He is therefore quite awake to the deceptions
of others. "The consequence is," says the British Consul at
Cheefoo, "that our textiles have got a bad name, and their place is
being supplied by American manufacturers. American drills, though
forty per cent, dearer, are driving English drills out of the
market." We are no longer trusted. The English brand used to be a
guarantee of honesty. It is so no longer.
It is the same in India. The English cotton won't wash. When the
clay and starch are rinsed out, it becomes a rag. The Indians grow
cotton. The Indians are clever workmen, with ingenious, subtle
fingers. They can spin an even thread as well as the workwomen of
Manchester. Capital has accumulated in India; mills have been
built; and the Indians now manufacture for themselves.
All this is well known in the manufacturing districts. It is spoken
of at public meetings. Sizing, and starching, and loading cotton
cloth with China clay, is known everywhere. Mr. Mellor, M.P.,
denounced the deception of the adulterating manufacturers. They
seem to believe that the consuming inhabitants of the globe are all
fools excepting themselves. He mentioned the case of an engineer,
who, in crossing the Indian Ocean, was decorating his turban with
muslin. "Is that English?" he was asked. "No; it is from
Switzerland. The English makes my fingers stick - it is gummy."
This is how we are losing our trade. This is how we are
encountering bad times.
American cotton goods sell in London, Manchester, and elsewhere, at
a fair profit. Indian cotton goods sell in China and Australia;
though Bombay twist sells at a higher price than English yarns. The
local cotton manufacture of India is now equal to the whole home
and foreign production of Manchester. Is not this a startling fact?
We are now giving our artisans technical education. What will
technical education do against wholesale cheating and lying? A
young woman buys a reel of cotton marked 250 yards. When she works
it out with her skin and bone, she finds it to contain only 175
yards. What can she think of the truthfulness of her
countrymen?
The deterioration of the standard of public men, of public
morality, and of political principles, is undeniable. When Baron
Dupin visited England, about sixty years ago, he observed with
admiration the courage, the intelligence, and the activity of our
commercial men. "It is not alone the courage, the intelligence, the
activity of the manufacturer or merchant which maintain the
superiority of the productions and commerce of their country; it is
far more their wisdom, their economy, and, above all, their
probity. If ever, in the British Islands, the useful citizen should
lose these virtues, we may be sure that for England, as well as for
any other country, notwithstanding the protection of the most
formidable navy, notwithstanding the foresight and activity of
diplomacy the most extended, and of political science the most
profound, the vessels of a degenerate commerce, repulsed from every
shore, would speedily disappear from those seas whose surface they
now cover with the treasures of the universe, bartered for the
treasures of the industry of the Three Kingdoms."*
(* ' The Commercial Power of Great Britain,' vol. i., Introduction,
p.xi.)
The employer is not only grievously hindered by the law; he is
still more grievously hindered by strikes. When trade seems to
improve, the men turn out and strike for more wages. Mills are
closed, iron-furnaces are damped out, building ceases, and
everything is at a standstill. We throw our means and opportunities
away; and the foreigner thrives upon our recklessness. It is more
than unfortunate - it is ruinous - that workmen should consider
their employers as their born enemies.
But what of the quality of the work done by the workmen? Time was
when men threw their heart and soul into their work - when they
took pride in the quality of their work - in doing that which
Chaucer describes when he says - work "must be done at leisure,
parfaitlie." But what have we now? Work done scampingly - without
skill, without conscience, without industry. Because of this,
tunnels fall in, iron bridges give way, and buildings tumble down.
Houses are left half finished, drains are left untrapped, and
disease speads abroad. O careless, thoughtless British workmen!
What lives you have taken, what families you have made desolate! So
that your work is done, you care not how it is done. You have not
put your best into it; you have not put yourself into it. The work
is done anyhow, so that it may pass muster. All this dishonest and
dishonourable. Poor British workman! It is not altogether your own
fault. You have been brought up without knowledge. You have been
educated without sympathy. You thought the world was against you,
whilst it has often sympathized with you.
All bad work is lying. It is thoroughly dishonest. You pay for
having work done well; it is done badly and dishonestly. It may be
varnished over with a fair show of sufficiency, but the sin is not
discovered until it is too late. So long as these things continue,
it is in vain to talk of the dignity of labour, or of the social
value of the so-called working man. There can be no dignity of
labour where there is no truthfulness of work. "Dignity does not
consist in hollowness and in light-handedness, but in
substantiality and in strength. If there be flimsiness and
superficiality of all kinds apparent in the work of the present day
more than in the work of our forefathers, whence comes it? From
eagerness and competition, and the haste to be rich."*
(* F.R. Conder. C.E..in 'Good Words.' )
Even the Polynesians have found us out. When Bishop Patteson was
voyaging among the South Sea Islands on his mission of mercy, he
found that the natives refused to by our goods. "A mere Brummagem
article," he said, "that won't stand wear, is quite valueless in
their eyes. Whatever is given to them, be it cheap or dear, though
it cost but a shilling, must be good of its kind. For example, a
rough-handles, single-blade knife, bought for a shilling, they
fully appreciate; but a knife with half-a-dozen blades they would
almost throw away." So Dr. Livingstone found that the natives of
Africa refused to buy English iron, because it was "rotten."
Socrates explained how useful and excellent a thing it was that a
man should resolve on perfection in his own line, so that, if he be
a carpenter, he will be the best possible carpenter; or if a
statesman, that he will be the best possible statesman. It is by
such means that true success is achieved. Such a carpenter,
Socrates said, would win the wreath of carpentering, though it was
only a shavings.
Take the case of Wedgwood, who had the spirit of the true worker.
Though risen from the ranks, he was never satisfied until he had
done his best. He looked especially to the quality of his work, to
the purposes it would serve, and to the appreciation of it by
others. This was the source of his power and success. He would
tolerate no inferior work. If it did not come up to his idea of
what it should be, he would take up his stick, break the vessel,
and throw it away, saying, "This won't do for Josiah
Wedgwood."
Of course he took the greatest care to ensure perfection, as
regarded geometrical proportions, glaze, form, and ornament. He
pulled down kiln after kiln to effect some necessary improvement.
He learnt perfection through repeated failures. He invented and
improved almost every tool used in his works. He passed much of his
time at the bench beside his workmen, instructing them
individually. How he succeeded, his works will show.
Another instance of true honesty and courage may be mentioned in
the case of a great contractor. We mean Thomas Brassey. Even when
scamping was common, he was always true to his word and work. The
Barentin viaduct of twenty-seven arches was nearly completed, when,
loaded with wet after a heavy fall of rain, the whole building
tumbled down. The casualty involved a loss of 30,000 pounds. The
contractor was neither morally nor legally responsible. He had
repeated protested against the material used in the structure, and
the French lawyers maintained that his protest freed him from
liability. But Mr. Brassey was of a different opinion. He had
contracted, he said, to make and maintain the road, and no law
should prevent him from being as good as his word. The viaduct was
rebuilt at Mr. Brassey's cost. His life is one of the hightest
examples we can offer to this generation.
We have had good times and bad times; but the result is always the
same. We take little thought for the future. We only economize when
we have no more money to spend upon selfish gratifications. An
employer at Bradford recently said: - Some five or six years ago,
we were in a state of great commercial prosperity. It almost
carried the trading classes off their heads. People were becoming
rapidly rich, and so bent were they on amassing money, that they
seemed to think there would be no end to it. The working classes
joined in the prosperity, and they lost their heads as well as
those above them. They struck for higher wages, and for a time they
got what they desired. They limited production, and urged that the
fewer hours they worked, the more money they would get for their
labour, and the better they would be off. But then came the period
of depression, and no efforts of strikes or unions could stave it
off. He urged upon the workmen that if they wished to see a return
to better times, they must honestly and faithfully do their duty,
and alter their present manner of doing slippery work, and doing as
little as possible for their money.
At a conference of working men in Edinburgh, one of the speakers
upheld the advantages of strikes. "My theory is," he said, "work as
little as you possibly can, and get as high a wage as you possibly
can." This theory, if worked out, would produce the entire
demoralization of labour; it would make it idle, inefficient, and
disloyal. Another speaker took an opposite view. He said: "The
existence of unions for the purpose of striking was immoral in the
extreme. The other day, he was going along a street in Edinburgh,
when he met a man walking very slowly and easily along. A boy
passing, said to him, 'You're taking it very easy the day.' 'It's
my master's time,' said the man. The man, " he added, "had the idea
forced into him that, by the striking system, the master's injury
was their benefit; and the effect of the whole system was, that a
piece of work well done could not be got."
It would be well if the working men could be got to see the
position in which they actually stand. They are now competing with
the working men all over the Continent and in America. It used to
be supposed that the superiority of English labour would overcome
all foreign competition. Whatever it may have once been, this is
now an utter fallacy. The foreigners have all the advantages of our
best machinery, with the latest improvements. They now manufacture
machines for themselves. They have learned to work as fast and as
well as English operatives. They work on Sunday and Saturday alike.
In France they work 72 hours a week, while in this country they
work only 56 hours a week. And the wages of the foreign artisans
are about 25 per cent. less than those in England. The English work
turned out is not so good and honest as that of France. How can we
maintain competition in the face of these facts? The French and
German cotton manufactures come into England free, while ours
cannot get into French and German ports without high prohibitive
duties. We have lost the monopoly of the trade, which we once
possessed, and it is not likely that we can ever regain it. Our
cotton trade will soon be confined to home supply; and if the
articles are not made good and cheap, they will be driven out of
use by the French and American fabrics. It will be the same with
every other product.
Mr. Holyoake spoke in the right spirit when he rebuked the mistakes
of unionism, and expressed his opinion - no doubt that of the elite
of the working classes - as to the duty of sympathy and sincerity
between master and man. "Recalling to my recollection," he said,
"fourteen years' experience as a workman, I say now that were I
secured wages for eight hours' daily labour, which would supply a
moderate competence before the strength of life was spent, and were
I left at liberty to produce the best work I could, so that my
pride and taste and character should be in my handicraft, and I had
a reasonable assurance of continuing in my situation while I
discharged my duties in good faith, I should now prefer that state
to any other. I should be the friend of the master; his fame would
be my pride, his interests mine. He would have the care and the
profit which is the honest due of care, and I should have content
and leisure for learning and study."
This nation, no doubt, possesses the best material in the world. We
have men who are willing to work, and able to work. But we want
good work, not scamped work. We have strikers against receiving low
wages; but we have no strikers against doing bad work. It is better
work, not longer hours, that is wanted. It is dishonest and
insincere labour that is discrediting English articles in all of
the great markets of the world. "Work," again says Mr. Holyoake,
"has small pleasure, because it has little pride. It ought to be
impossible for employers to find men who will execute shabby work.
It is a sort of crime against the hounour of industry, a fraud by
connivance upon the purchaser. Nothing shows more plainly the state
of honour in artisanship than the fact that we have all sorts of
trade unions to come to the support of a man who refuses low wages,
but not one union professedly to succour a man who refuses to do
dishonest work." Let such a system continue, and all the science
and art schools in the world could not maintain England as a great
commercial country.
The same cry comes to us from America. The truth of the proverbial
saying, "There is no God west of the Missouri," is everywhere
manifest. The almighty dollar is the true divinity, and its worship
is universal. A Sacramento paper says that "American are a
money-loving and money-making people. They have no Queen or
aristocracy to rule them; their aristocracy is money. The lust of
wealth overrides every other consideration. Fraud in trade is the
rule instead of the exception. We poison our provisions with
adulteration. We even poison our drugs with cheaper materials. We
sell shoddy for wool. We sell veneering for solid wood. We build
wretched sheds of bad brick and bad mortar and green wood, and call
them houses. We rob and cheat each other all round, in every trade
and business, and we are all so bent on making money that we have
not time to protest against the more palpable frauds, but console
ourselves by going forth and swindling somebody else. We pay a very
heavy price for our national idiosyncrasy. We are rapidly
destroying our national sense of honesty and integrity. In those
benighted and slavish countries which are ruled by monarchs, they
contrive to live a great deal cheaper and a good deal better than
we can. There, fraud is regarded as criminal, and the impostor,
when detected is punished severely. But those are old fogey
countries, who know nothing about liberty. They have no Fourth of
July, no Wall Street, no codfish or shoddy aristocracies. They do
not recognize the fact that the right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness (which means money), entitles every man to
cheat his neighbours, and bars redress."
Strange to say, the Americans are beginning to think that the
badness of work, and the unwillingness to do good work, is, to a
certain extent, the outcome of the common school system. Everybody
is so well educated that he is above doing manual labour. There are
no American apprentices, and no American servants. We do not speak
without authority. A writer in Scribner's Monthly says that "the
Americans make a god of their common school system. It is treason
to speak a word against it. A man is regarded as a foe to education
who expresses any doubt of the value of it. But we may as well open
our eyes to the fact that in preparing men for the work of life,
especially for that work depending on manual skill, it is a
hindrance and a failure. It is mere smatter, veneering and
cram."
The writer of the article says that the old system of
apprenticeship has grown almost entirely into disuse. The boys are
at school, and cannot be apprenticed to a trade. Hence most
mechanical work is done by foreigners. The lad who has made a
successful beginning of the cultivation of his intellect does not
like the idea of getting a living by the skilful use of his hands
in the common employments of life. He has no taste for bodily
labour. He gets some light employment, or tries to live upon his
wits.*
(* " If it is asked why there is not a universal effort made for
the restoration of the apprentice system, we reply that there is a
very ugly lion in the way. A piano-maker complained that he could
not get men enough to do his work, the reason being that his men
belonged to a Society that had taken upon itself to regulate the
number of apprentices that he could be permitted to instruct in the
business. They had limited the number to one, who was utterly
insufficient to supply the demand, and the master was powerless.
There was no other way open to him but to import his workmen,
already instructed, from abroad. In brief, there is a comspiracy
amongst Society men all over the country, to keep American boys out
of the useful trades, and industrial education is thus under the
band of an outrageous system, which ought to be put down by the
strong hand of the law. It is thus seen that, while the common
school naturally turns the great multitudes of its attendants away
from manual employments, those who still feel inclined to enter
upon them have no freedom to do so, because a great army of Society
men stand firmly in the way, overruling employers and employed
alike." - Scribner's Monthly Illustrated Magazine for March 1880.
)
So said Longfellow. The village smithy stands there no longer. When
General Armstrong, of the coloured college of Hampton, went to the
north in search of blacksmiths, he found no Americans to engage.
Every blacksmith was an Irishman. And in the next generation of
Irishmen, every boy will be so well educated that he will not put
his hands to any bodily labour. A New York clergyman possessing a
large family, to correct this spreading influence, recently
declared fron his pulpit that he intended that every lad of his
family should learn some mechanical employment, by which, on an
emergency, he might get a living. Rich and poor should alike be
taught to work, skilfully if possible; for it is quite as likely
that the rich will become poor, as that some of the poor will
become rich; and that is a poor education which fails to prepare a
man to take care of himself and his dependants throughout
life.
We have lately been complaining of the badness of trade, but has
not much of it happened through our own misdoing? In the arithmetic
of the counting-house, two and two do not always make four. How
many tricks are resorted to - in which honesty forms no part - for
making money faster than others! Instead of working patiently and
well for a modest living, many desire to get rich all at once. The
spirit of the age is not that of a trader, but of a gambler. The
pace is too fast to allow of any one stopping to inquire as to
those who have fallen out by the way. They press on; the race for
wealth is for the swift. Their faith is in money. It needs no
prophet to point out the connexion of our distress with the sin of
commercial gambling and fraud, and of social extravagance and
vanity, of widespread desolation and misery.
"My son," said a father, "ye're gawn out into t'warld: ye may be
wranged; but if it comes to that, chet rather then be cheted."
Another said, "Make money - honestly, if you can; but if not, make
it." A third said, "Honesty is better than dishonesty; I've tried
both." Of course we quote these phrases as being at utter variance
with truth and honesty. But it is to be doubted whether higher
principles of conduct prevail in many of the commercial classes of
life. A young man begins business. He goes on slowly yet safely.
His gains may be small, but they are justly come by. "A faithful
man shall abound with blessings; but he that maketh haste to be
rich shall not be innocent: he hath an evil eye, and considereth
not that poverty may come upon him."
In large commercial towns, young men are amazed at the splendour of
the leaders of trade. They are supposed to be enormously rich.
Every door opens to them. They command the highest places in
society. They give balls, parties, and dinners. Their houses are
full of wine of the choicest vintage. Their conversation is not
great; it is mostly about wine, horses, or prices. They seem to
sail upon the golden sea of a great accumulated fortune.
Young business men are often carried away by such examples. If they
have not firmness and courage, they are apt to follow in their
footsteps. The first speculation may be a gain. The gain may be
followed by another and they are carried off their feet by the lust
for wealth. They become dishonest and unscrupulous. Their bills are
all over the discount market. To keep up their credit they spend
more money upon pictures, and even upon charities. Formerly, greedy
and unjust men seized the goods of others by violence. To-day, they
obtain them by fraudulent bankruptcies. Formerly, every attempt was
open; to-day, everything is secret, until at length the last event
comes, and everything is exposed. The man fails; the bills are
worthless; the pictures are sold; and the recreant flies to avoid
the curses of his creditors.
In one bankruptcy case, over 39,000 pounds were stated in the
accounts as expenses for orphanages and charities! "I have the
authority of the accountant," said a speaker at a meeting of the
creditors, "for stating that for four or five years this firm has
been purchasing goods to an enormous extent, and flooding the
eastern markets, when they were hopelessly insolvent, carrying on a
reckless, I will say a gambling, trade for financial purposes, or,
in common parlance, to 'raise the wind.' The munificent charity of
an insolvent estate appears to me ghastly. It reminds me of a
remark of our bishop, that there are some men amongst us who build
churches out of part of their ungodly gains to pave their way to
heaven."
Who has not heard of the failure of banks originating in gambling
and fraud, with the result of lost fortunes and family reverses
amongst all classes of shareholders? Schiller says, "It is daring
to embezzle a million, but it is great beyond measure to steal a
crown: the sin seems to lessen as the guilt increases." Yet the
embezzlement of millions has not been thought extraordinary of
recent years. Money has been taken from bank deposits to buy up
railway shares, or to buy land in some remote colony, the
speculation for a rise often ending in a ruinous fall. Then "the
bank broke" and the downfall came, ending in ruin and desolation to
a thousand homes. Men have been driven insane, and women have
prayed to be delivered from their lives.
"Pity us, God! there are five of us here,
With threescore years on the youngest head,
Five of us sitting in sorrow and fear -
Well for our widowed one she is dead.
Could they not wait a while? we will not keep them long;
We could live on so little, too, cheerful and brave,
But to leave the old house, where old memories throng,
For the Poorhouse! oh, rather the peace of the grave!" *
(* Dr. Walter C. Smith, the author of these lines, appeared at a
meeting at Edinburgh, and said that "he had received a large number
of letters on the subject of the bank failure, and one class of
correspondents asked him how he could be ' a converted man' seeing
that he was making so much ado about filthy lucre. The present
calamity unhappily involved a great deal of distress to his
fellow-men, and for his own part he had no great sympathy with a
religion which had so little sympathy with the sufferings of their
brethren. He felt ashamed that such frauds should have been
committed among them by men of trust, but he hoped that their dear
country would come out of the gloom with its honour unstained, and
enter on a career of active industry with an atmosphere purer and
healthier than before. He had been asked whether a case of five
elderly sisters, about whom many had read, was a real case. It was
a real case, and he should never forget the time when he first saw
those ladies, nine days after the bank broke. During that time a
meal had never been cooked in that house, their clothes had never
been taken off their backs, and they had never lain in their beds,
they were so bewildered and amazed, vaguely hoping that the good
God would come and take them away from the evil that was to
follow." )
Men already rich, but hasting to be richer, throw themselves into
wild speculations with the view of making money more rapidly than
before. With what result? Only to land them in hopeless bankruptcy.
Many instances are at hand to prove this. A rich banker of
Tipperary - a radical and a demagogue - got himself returned to
Parliament, and in course of time, to quiet him, he was made a Lord
of the Treasury. A coronet seemed to gleam before his eyes. But in
this he was disappointed. He had launched into Italian, American,
and Spanish railways, and lost heavily. Then he began to forge
deeds, conveyances, and bills for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
His clever but unprincipled schemes failed; his bills were
dishonoured, his ruin was imminent. Late at night he entered his
study, and took from it a phial of prussic acid. He strayed to
Hampstead Heath. drank the poison, and died.
What scenes there were in the streets of Thurles and Tipperary
after his death was announced. Old men weeping and wailing for the
loss of everything; widows kneeling on the ground and asking God if
it could be true that they were beggared for ever. And yet it was
true. The banker and Lord of the Treasury had lost the last
shilling of his bank, and plunged from fraud into still deeper
fraud to recoup his losses, which only served to spread upon those
around him a wilder and more hopeless ruin.
One of the last letters that he wrote was to his cousin. He said, "
To what infamy I have come step by step, heaping crime upon crime I
am the cause of ruin, and misery, and disgrace to thousands. Oh,
how I feel for those on whom this ruin must fall! I could bear all
punishment, but I could not bear to witness their sufferings. It
must be better that I should not live. Oh that I had never quitted
Ireland! Oh taht I had resisted the first attempts to launch me
into speculation! I might then have remained what I was, honest and
truthful. I weep and weep now, but what can that avail?"
Nations and states are dishonest as well as individuals. Their
condition is to be measured by the state of their 3 per cents.
Spain and Greece and Turkey are dishonoured in the commercial
world. Spain was killed by her riches. The gold which came pouring
into Spain from her vanquished colonies in South America depraved
the people, and rendered them indolent and lazy. Nowadays a
Spaniard will blush to work; he will not blush to beg. Greece has
repudiated her debts for many years. Like Turkey, she has nothing
to pay. All the works of industry in those countries are done by
foreigners.
Much better things might have been hoped from Philadelphia and the
other American States which repudiated their debts many years ago.
These were rich States, and the money borrowed from abroad made
them richer, by opening up roads and constructing canals for the
benefit of the people. The Rev. Sydney Smith - who lent his money,
"the savings from a life's income made with difficulty and
privation" - let the world know of his loss. He addressed a
remonstrance to the House of Congress at Washington, which he
afterwards published. "The Americans," he said, "who boast to have
improved the institutions of the Old World, have at least equalled
its crimes. A great nnation, after trampling under foot all earthly
tyranny, has been guilty of a fraud as enormous as ever disgraced
the worst King of the most degraded nation of Europe."
The State of Illinois acted nobly, though it was poor. It had
borrowed money, like Philadelphia, for the purpose of carrying out
internal improvements. When the inhabitants of rich Philadelphia
set the example of repudiating their debts, many of the poorer
States wished to follow in their footsteps. As every householder
had a vote, it was easy, if they were dishonest, to repudiate their
debts. A convention met at Springfield, the capital of the State,
and the repudiation ordinance was offered to the meeting. It was
about to be adopted, when it was stopped by an honest man. Stephen
A. Douglas (let his honourable name be mentioned!) was lying sick
at his hotel, when he desired to be taken to the convention. He was
carried on a mattress, for he was too ill to walk. Lying on his
back he wrote the following resolution, which he offered as a
substitute for the repudiation ordinance:-
"Resolved that Illinois will be honest, although she never pays a
cent."
The resolution touched the honest sentiment of every member of the
convention. It was adopted with enthusiasm. It dealth a death-blow
to the system of repudiation. The canal bonds immediately rose.
Capital and immigration flowed into the State; and Illinois is now
one of the most prosperous States in America. She has more miles of
railway than any of the other States. Her broad prairies are one
great grainfield, and are dotted about with hundreds of thousands
of peaceful, happy homes. This is wht honesty does.
The truth is, we have become too selfish. We think of ourselves far
more than of others. The more devoted to pleasure, the less we
think of our fellow-creatures. Selfish people are impervious to the
needs of others. They exist in a sort of mailed armour, and no
weapons, either of misery or want, can assail them. Their senses
are only open to those who can minister to their gratifications.
"They are men," says St. Chrysostom, "who seem to have come into
the world only for pleasure, and that they might fatten this
perishable body....At sight of their luxurious table the angels
retire - God is offended - the demons rejoice - virtuous men are
shocked - and even the domestics scorn and laugh....The just men
who have gone beofe left sumptuous feasts to tyrants, and to men
enriched by crime, who were the scourges of the world."
We no longer know how to live upon little. A man must have luxury
about him. And yet a man's life does not consist in the abundance
of things he possesseth; he must live honestly, though poor.
Retrenchment of the useless, the want even of the relatively
necessary, is the high-road to Christian self-denial, as well as to
antique strength of character. That of which our age stands most in
need, is a man able to gratify every just desire, and yet to be
contented with little. "A great heart in a little house," syas
Lacordaire, "is of all things here below, that which has ever
touched me most. Happy the man who soweth the good and the true.
The harvest will not fail him!"
Here is a fine specimen of honesty and truthfulness on the part of
a poor German peasant. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre has told the story
in his ' Etudes de la Nature.' He was serving as an engineer under
the Count de Saint-Germain during his campaign in Hesse, in 1760.
For the first time he became familiar with the horrors of war. Day
by day he passed through sacked villages and devastated fields and
farmyards. Men, women and children were flying from their cottages
in tears. Armed men were everywhere destroying the fruits of their
labour, regarding it as part of their glory. But in the midst of so
many acts of cruelty, Saint-Pierre was consoled by a sublime trait
of character displayed by a poor man whose cottage and farm lay in
the way of the advancing army.
A captain of dragoons was ordered out with his troop to forage for
provisions. They reached a poor cabin and knocked at the door. An
old man with a white beard appeared. "Take me to a field," said the
officer, "where I can obtain forage for my troops." "Immediately,
sir," replied the old man. He put himself at their head, and
ascended the valley. After about half an hour's march a fine field
of barley appeared. "This will do admirably," said the officer.
"No," said the old man; "wait a little , and all will be right."
They went on again, until they reached another field of barley. The
troops dismounted, mowed down the grain, and trussing it up in
bundles, put them on their horses. "Friend," said the officer, "how
is it that you have brought us so far? The first field of barley
that we saw was quite as good as this." "That is quite true," said
the peasant, "but it was not mine!"
