Part 7 (1/2)
Honesty.
*Honesty* relates to transactions in which money or other property is concerned. In its broadest sense, it forbids not only the violation of the rights of individuals, but, equally, acts and practices designed to gain unfair emolument at the expense of the community, or of any cla.s.s or portion of its members. It enjoins not merely the paying of debts and the performance of contracts, but rigid fidelity in every trust, whether private or public. Its ground is intrinsic fitness; and a sense of fitness will suggest its general rules, and will always enable one to determine his duty in individual cases. Its whole field may be covered by two precepts, level with the humblest understanding, and infallible in their application. The first relates to transactions between man and man,-Do that, and only that, which you would regard as just and right, if it were done to you. The second embraces concerns that affect numbers or cla.s.ses of persons,-Do that, and only that, which, were you the responsible trustee and guardian of the public good, you would prescribe or sanction as just and right.
*Notwithstanding the undoubted increase of dishonesty* in recent times and its disastrous frequency, there can be no doubt that *the majority of men are honest*, and that the transactions in which there is no deception or wrong, largely outnumber those which are fraudulent. Were this not so, there could be neither confidence nor credit, enterprise would be paralyzed, business would be reduced to the lowest demands of absolute necessity, and every man would be the sole custodian of what he might make, produce, or in any way acquire. There can, therefore, be no element more directly hostile to the permanence, not to say the progress, of material civilization and of the higher interests which depend upon it, than fraud, peculation, and the violation of trust, in pecuniary and mercantile affairs, and with reference to public funds and measures. Yet there are methods, for which to a large degree honest men are responsible, in which dishonesty is created, nourished, and rewarded. In political life, if few office-holders are inaccessible to bribes, it is not because men of impregnable integrity might not, as in earlier times, be found in ample numbers for all places of trust; but because the compromises, humiliations, and concessions through which alone, in many of our const.i.tuencies, one can become the candidate of a party, are such as an honest man either would spurn at the outset, or could endure only by parting with his honesty. So long as men will persist in electing to munic.i.p.al trusts those whose sole qualification is blind loyalty and unscrupulous service to a party, they can expect only robbery under the form of taxation; and, in fact, the financial revelations that have been made in the commercial metropolis of our country are typical of what is taking place, so far as opportunity serves, in cities, towns, and villages all over the land. As regards embezzlements, forgeries, and frauds in the management of pecuniary trusts, there can be no doubt that the number is greatly multiplied by the morbid sympathy of the public with the criminals, by their frequent evasion of punishment or prompt pardon after conviction, and by the ease with which they have often recovered their social position and the means of maintaining it.
In addition to this complicity with fraud and wrong on the part of the public, there are many ways in which *dishonesty engenders*, almost necessitates *dishonesty*. A branch of business, in itself honest, may be virtually closed against an honest man. The adulterations of food, so appallingly prevalent, will suggest an ill.u.s.tration of this point. There are commodities in which the mixture of cheaper ingredients cannot be detected by the purchaser, and which in their debased form can be offered at so low a price as to drive the genuine commodities which they replace out of the market; and thus the alternative is presented to the hitherto honest dealer to partic.i.p.ate in the fraud, or to quit the business. The former course is, no doubt, taken by many who sincerely regret the seeming necessity.
*Dishonesty* not only injures the immediate sufferer by the fraud or wrong, but when it becomes frequent, *is a public injury* and calamity. In one way or another it alienates from the use of every honest man a very large proportion of his earnings or income. In this country, at the present time, we probably fall short of the truth in saying that at least a third part of every citizen's income is paid in the form of either direct or indirect taxation, and of this amount a percentage much larger than would be readily believed is pillaged on its way into the treasury or in its disburs.e.m.e.nt. Then, as regards bad debts (so-called), most of them fraudulently contracted or evaded, they are not, in general, the loss of the immediate creditor, nor ought they to be; he is obliged to charge for his goods a price which will cover these debts, and honest purchasers must thus pay the dues of the insolvent purchaser. Nor is this a solitary instance in which innocent persons are obliged to suffer for wrongs with which they seem to have no necessary connection. There are very few exceptions to the rule, under which, however, we have room but one more example. It is a well known fact that many American railways have not only cost very much more money than was ever laid out upon them, but are made, by keeping the construction-account long and generously open, to represent on the books of the respective corporations much larger sums than they cost,-especially in cases where the enterprise is lucrative and the dividends are limited by statute.
Now in some sections of our country a transaction of this kind-essentially fraudulent, under however respectable auspices-is a disastrous check on productive industry by the heavy freight-tariff which it imposes,-so heavy sometimes as to keep bulky commodities, as wheat and corn, out of the markets where, at a fair cost for transportation, they might find remunerative sale. Thus the very means devised for opening the resources of a region of country may be abused to their obstruction and hindrance.
In fine, dishonesty in all its forms has a diffusive power of injury, and, on the mere ground of self-defence, demands the remonstrance and antagonism of the entire community.
While in most departments of conduct there is a wide neutral *ground between the right and the condemnably wrong*, there are matters of business in which there seems to be no such intermediate territory, but in which what is fair, honorable, and even necessary, is closely contiguous to dishonesty. Thus, except in the simplest retail business, all modern commerce is speculation, and the line between legitimate and dishonest speculation is to some minds difficult of discernment. Yet the discrimination may be made. A man has a right to all that he earns by services to the community, and these earnings may in individual instances reach an immense sum. We can easily understand how this may be, nay, must needs be the case with the very high salaries paid to master manufacturers. Such salaries would not be paid, did not the intelligence, skill, and organizing capacity of these men cheapen by a still larger amount the commodities made under their direction. The case is precisely similar with the merchant engaged in legitimate commerce. By his knowledge of the right times and best modes of purchasing, by his enterprise and sagacity in maintaining intercourse with and between distant markets, and by his outlay of capital and skill as a carrier of commodities from the place of their production to the place where they are needed for use, he cheapens the goods that pa.s.s through his hands by a greater amount than the toll he levies upon them, which-however large-is his rightful due.
Thus also, when, in antic.i.p.ation of a scarcity of some one commodity, a merchant so raises the price as essentially to diminish the sale, *he earns his increased profits*; for an enhanced price is the only practicable check on consumption. For instance, if at the actual rate of consumption the bread-stuff on hand would be consumed a month before the new harvest could be made availing, no statistical statement could prevent the month of famine; but experienced grain-merchants can adjust the price of the stock in hand so as to induce precisely the amount of economy which will make that stock last till it can be replaced. They will, indeed, obtain a large profit on their sales, and will be accused by ignorant persons of speculating on scarcity and popular apprehension; but it will be due wholly to their prescience that the scarcity did not become famine, and the apprehension suffering; and they will have merited for this service more than the largest profits that can accrue to them.
The same principles will apply to *speculation in stocks*, which is in many minds identified with dishonest gain. Stocks are marketable commodities, equally with sugar and salt. They are liable to legitimate fluctuations in value, their actual value being affected, often by facts that transpire, often by opinions that rest on a.s.signable grounds. Now if a man possess skill and foresight enough to buy stocks at their lowest rates and to sell them when they will bring him a profit, he makes a perfectly legitimate investment of his intelligence and sagacity, and in facilitating sales for those who need to sell, and purchases for those who wish to buy, and thus preventing capital from lying unused, or remaining inconvertible at need, he earns all that his business yields him by the substantial services which he renders.
*The legitimate business of the merchant and the broker is contingent, as we have seen, on fluctuations in the market*, and he who has the sagacity to foresee these fluctuations and the enterprise to prepare for them, derives from them advantage to which he is fairly ent.i.tled. But it is precisely at this point that the stress of temptation rests, and the opportunity presents itself for dishonesty in ways of which the laws take no cognizance, and on which public opinion is by no means severe. The contingencies which sagacity can foresee, capital and credit can often create. Virtual scarcity may be produced by forestalling and monopoly.
When there is no actual dearth, even famine-prices may be obtained for the necessaries of life by the skilful manipulation of the grain-market. So too, in the stock-market, bonds and shares, instead of being bought or sold for what they are worth, of actual owners and to real purchasers, may be merely gambled with,-bought in large amounts in order to create a demand that shall swell their price, or so thrown upon the market as to reduce their price below their real value, and all this with the sole purpose of mutual contravention and discomfiture. By operations of this kind, not only is no useful end subserved, but the financial interests and relations of the community are injuriously, often ruinously, deranged; while not a few private holders of stock have their credit essentially impaired by a sudden fall of price, or by the inflation of nominal value are led into rash speculations.
In the cases cited it may be seen how closely *the right abuts upon the wrong*, so that one may over-pa.s.s the line almost unconsciously. Yet it is believed that a man may determine for himself on which side of the line he belongs. The department of business, or the mode of transacting business, which cannot by any possibility be of benefit to the community, still more, that which in its general course is of positively injurious tendency, is essentially dishonest, even though there be no individual acts of fraud. He really defrauds the public who lives upon the public without rendering, or purposing to render any valuable return; and if there be any profession or department of business to which this description applies, it should be avoided or forsaken by every man who means to be honest.
Among the many mooted cases in which the question of honesty is involved, our proposed limits will permit us to consider only that of usury(14) (so-called). There can be no doubt that usury laws and the opinion that sustains them sprang from the false theory, according to which money was regarded, not as value, but merely as the measure of value. It is now understood that it owes its capacity to measure value solely to its own intrinsic value; that its paper representatives can equal it in purchasing power only when convertible at pleasure into coin; and that paper not immediately convertible can obtain the character of money only so far as there is promise or hope of its ultimate conversion into coin. It follows that money stands on the same footing with all other values,-that its use, therefore, is a marketable commodity, varying indefinitely in its fitting price, according as money is abundant or scarce, the loan for a long or a short period, and the borrower of more or less certain solvency. For ordinary loans the relations of supply and demand are amply competent to regulate the rate of interest, while he who incurs an extra-hazardous risk fairly earns a correspondingly high rate of compensation. There is, therefore, no intrinsic wrong in one's obtaining for the use of his money all that it is worth; and while we cannot justify the violation of any laws not absolutely immoral, dishonesty forms no part of the offence of the man who takes more than legal interest.(15)
Section V.
Beneficence.
*We have a distinct consciousness of the needs of human beings.* If we have not suffered dest.i.tution in our own persons, we yet should deprecate it. What we should dread others feel. The things which we find or deem essential to our well-being, many lack. We, it may be, possess them or the means of procuring them, beyond our power of personal use. This larger share of material goods has come to us, indeed, honestly, by the operation of laws inherent in the structure of society, and thus, as we believe, by Divine appointment. At the same time we are conscious, in a greater or less degree, of the benevolent affections. We are moved to pity by the sight or knowledge of want or suffering. Our sense of fitness is painfully disturbed by the existence of needs unsupplied, of calamities unrelieved.
We cannot but be aware of the adaptation of such superfluity of material goods as we may possess to beneficent uses; and it can hardly be that we shall not rest in the belief that, in the inevitable order of society, it is the predetermined design and purpose of abundance to supply deficiency,-of the capacity of service, to meet the ever pressing demands for service. Beneficence, then, is a duty based on considerations of intrinsic fitness.
But *beneficence must be actual*, not merely formal, *good-doing*. Some of the most easy and obvious modes of supply or relief are adapted to perpetuate the very evils to which they minister, either by destroying self-respect, by discouraging self-help, or by granting immunity to positively vicious habits. The tendency of instinctive kindness is to indiscriminate giving. But there can be very few cases in which this is not harmful. It sustains mendicants as a recognized cla.s.s of society; and as such they are worse than useless. They necessarily lose all sense of personal dignity; they remain ignorant or become incapable of all modes of regular industry, and it is impossible for them to form a.s.sociations that will be otherwise than degrading and corrupting.
Of equally injurious tendency are the various modes of *relief at the public charge*. They affix upon their beneficiaries the indelible brand of pauperism, which in numerous instances becomes hereditary, and in not a few cases has been transmitted through several generations. Experience has shown that recovery from a condition thus dependent is exceedingly rare, even with the young and strong, who, had they been tided over the stress of need by private and judicious charity, would shortly have resumed their place among the self-subsisting members of the community. Public alms, while they are thus harmful to their recipients, impose upon society a far heavier burden than private charity. This is due in part to the permanent pauperism created by the system, in part to the wastefulness which characterizes public expenditures of every kind. By special permission of the national legislature, the experiment was tried in Glasgow, under the direction of Dr. Chalmers, of subst.i.tuting private munificence for relief from the public chest, in one of the poorest territorial parishes of the city, embracing a population of ten thousand, and the result was the expenditure of little more than one third of what had been expended under legal authority. At the same time, the poor and suffering were so much more faithfully and kindly cared for, that there was a constant overflow of poverty from the other districts of the city into this. Public charity, when thoroughly systematized, is liable to the still stronger objection, that those who are able to give relief, in ceasing to feel the necessity, lose the will and the capacity of benevolent effort. Yet, were there no public provision for the poor, there would be cases of dest.i.tution, disease, disability, and mental imbecility, which would elude private charity, however diligent and generous. It must be remembered, too, that the same causes may at once enhance the demand for beneficent aid, and cripple its resources. Thus, in a conflagration, a flood, a dearth, or a commercial panic, while the stress of need among the poor is greatly intensified, the persons on whose charity, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, they could place the most confident reliance, may be among the chief sufferers. Thus, also, during the prevalence of infectious disease, a large proportion of those who are wont to perform the offices of humanity for the suffering, are withdrawn by their own fears, or those of their friends, from their wonted field of service. Then, too, there are various forms of disease and infirmity, which demand special treatment or a permanent asylum; and while inst.i.tutions designed to meet these wants are more wisely and economically administered under private than under public auspices, the state should never suffer them to fail or languish for lack of subsidy from private sources. The most desirable condition of things undoubtedly is that-more nearly realized in France than in any other country in Christendom-in which the relief of the poor and suffering in ordinary cases, and the charge of charitable inst.i.tutions to a large degree, are left to individuals, voluntary organizations, and religious fraternities and sisterhoods, while government supplements and subsidizes private charity where it is found inadequate to the need.
The demands upon beneficence are by no means exhausted, when material relief and aid have been bestowed. Indeed, alms are often given as a purchase of quitclaim for personal service. But the manifestation and expression of sympathy may make the gift of immeasurably more worth and efficacy. Considerate courtesy, delicacy, and gentleness are essential parts of beneficence. There are very few so abject that they do not feel insulted and degraded by what is coldly, grudgingly, superciliously, or chidingly bestowed; while the thoughtful tenderness which never forgets the sensibilities of those whom it relieves, inspires comfort, hope, and courage, arouses whatever capacity there may be of self-help, and is often the means of replacing the unfortunate in the position from which they have fallen.
*Beneficence has a much broader scope than the mere relief of the poor and suffering.* In the daily intercourse of life there are unnumbered opportunities for kindness, many of them slight, yet in their aggregate, of a magnitude that eludes all computation. There is hardly a transaction, an interview, a casual wayside meeting, in which it is not in the power of each person concerned to contribute in an appreciable degree to the happiness or the discomfort of those whom he thus meets, or with whom he is brought into a relation however transient. In all our movements among our fellow-men, it is possible for us to ”go about doing good.” What we can thus do we are bound to do. We perceive and feel that this is fitting for us as social and as mutually dependent beings. We are conscious of the benefit accruing to us from little, nameless attentions and courtesies, often of mere look, or manner, or voice; and from these experiences we infer that the possibility, and therefore the duty of beneficence is coextensive with our whole social life.