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On one hand, you had men educated to business methods which permitted this form of dishonesty and condemned that; their moral fibre was strained, if not weakened, by the struggle for money going on all around us; on the other hand, you had opportunity, the fascination of chance, the uncertainty of punishment. The causes would continue the same, and the effects would continue the same.
Americans prefer to believe that they are innocent, innocent of immorality after marriage, innocent of dishonesty in business, innocent of incompatibility between husbands and wives. They have made a code for what is to be done, and what is not to be done, and whatever differs is un-American. If their right hands offend them they cut them off rather than admit possession.
In all moral affairs the lower classes in Russia are very lenient in their judgments, and are strongly disposed, like the Americans, to admire what is called in Transatlantic phraseology "a smart man," though the smartness is known to contain a large admixture of dishonesty; and yet the vox populi in Russia emphatically declares that the merchants as a class are unscrupulous and dishonest.
Both rejected it and the consequences flowing from it. Lincoln quibbled when asked to accept it as a rule governing his political conduct. Douglas, by a cunning device, sought to destroy its force as a rule of private right. Lincoln insisted on the essential dishonesty of the juggling trick by which Douglas got rid of the adjudicated law.
But his bitter virtue took the turn of the misanthrope; he moped over the dishonesty of his ancestors, from which, somehow, he generalised a dishonesty of all men. More especially he distrusted philanthropy or free-giving; and he swore if he could find one man who took his exact rights he should have all the gold of Glengyle.
Man alone, the king of this globe, the last and greatest work of the Supreme Being, below the sun; man alone hath basely dishonoured his own nature; and by dishonesty, cruelty, ingratitude, and treachery, hath called his Maker's goodness in question, by puzzling us to account how a benevolent being should form so foolish and so vile an animal.
We at once see the object of Caius, and how the justice of it might have blinded him to the demoralising effects of his measure. 'The public land, he said in effect, 'belongs to all Romans and so does the vectigal. How this would catch the farmer's fancy is as obvious as is its odious dishonesty.
This was his thought as he turned with the impulse to fly directly back to the village and invest a portion of the money in necessaries for Hannah. What was it that suddenly arrested his steps? The recollection that the money was not his own! that to use it even for the best purpose in the world would be an act of dishonesty. He paused and reflected.
They were, in fact, in pretty much the same position as Peter's Procurator-General, and, with true Russian bonhomie, they disliked ruining individuals who were no worse than the majority of their fellows. Besides this, according to the received code of official morality insubordination was a more heinous sin than dishonesty, and political offences were regarded as the blackest of all.
Nor will it take off from the crime of it, or lessen the dishonesty, to say, 'I took it for good and current money, and it goes as it comes; for, as before, my having been cheated does not authorise me to cheat any other person, so neither was it a just or honest thing in that person who put the bad money upon me, if they knew it to be bad; and if it were not honest in them, how can it be so in me?
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