centuries, it has its crevices, dark
corners, secret holes and winding passages--an endless harbor for rats and
vermin, where no trap can catch them. We are villanously infested with
legal rats and rascals, who are able to commit the most flagrant
dishonesties with impunity. They can do all of wrong which is profitable,
without that part which is actionable. The very ingenuity of these
miscreants excites such admiration of their skill, that their life is
gilded with a specious respectability. Men profess little esteem for
blunt, necessitous thieves, who rob and run away; but for a gentleman who
can break the whole of God's law so adroitly, as to leave man's law
unbroken; who can indulge in such conservative stealing that his
fellow-men award him a rank among honest men for the excessive skill of
his dishonesty--for such a one, I fear, there is almost universal
sympathy.

8. POLITICAL DISHONESTY, breeds dishonesty of every kind. It is possible
for good men to permit single sins to co-exist with general integrity,
where the evil is indulged through ignorance. Once, undoubted Christians
were slave-traders. They might be, while unenlightened; but not in our
times. A state of mind which will _intend_ one fraud, will, upon
occasions, intend a thousand. He that upon one emergency will lie, will be
supplied with emergencies. He that will perjure himself to save a friend,
will do it, in a desperate juncture, to save himself. The highest Wisdom
has informed us that _He that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in
much_. Circumstances may withdraw a politician from temptation to any but
political dishonesty; but under temptation, a dishonest politician would
be a dishonest cashier,--would be dishonest anywhere,--in anything. The
fury which destroys an opponent's character, would stop at nothing, if
barriers were thrown down. That which is true of the leaders in politics,
is true of subordinates. Political dishonesty in voters runs into general
dishonesty, as the rotten speck taints the whole apple. A community whose
politics are conducted by a perpetual breach of honesty on both sides,
will be tainted by immorality throughout. Men will play the same game in
their private affairs, which they have learned to play in public matters.
The guile, the crafty vigilance, the dishonest advantage, the cunning
sharpness;--the tricks and traps and sly evasions; the equivocal promises,
and unequivocal neglect of them, which characterize polit