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
constituencies, 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
municipal 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 illustration 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 participate 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 taxatio