w--vulgarly
expressed in the proverb, "Honesty is the best policy." That proverb is
indeed wholly inapplicable to matters of private interest. It is not
true that honesty, as far as material gain is concerned, profits
individuals. A clever and cruel knave will in a mixed society always be
richer than an honest person can be. But Honesty is the best "policy,"
if policy mean practice of State. For fraud gains nothing in a State. It
only enables the knaves in it to live at the expense of honest people;
while there is for every act of fraud, however small, a loss of wealth
to the community. Whatever the fraudulent person gains, some other
person loses, as fraud produces nothing; and there is, _besides_, the
loss of the time and thought spent in accomplishing the fraud, and of
the strength otherwise obtainable by mutual help (not to speak of the
fevers of anxiety and jealousy in the blood, which are a heavy physical
loss, as I will show in due time). Practically, when the nation is
deeply corrupt cheat answers to cheat; every one is in turn imposed
upon, and there is to the body politic the dead loss of the ingenuity,
together with the incalculable mischief of the injury to each defrauded
person, producing collateral effect unexpectedly. My neighbour sells me
bad meat: I sell him in return flawed iron. We neither of us get one
atom of pecuniary advantage on the whole transaction, but we both suffer
unexpected inconvenience; my men get scurvy, and his cattle-truck runs
off the rails.

105. The examination of this form of Charis must, therefore, lead us
into the discussion of the principles of government in general, and
especially of that of the poor by the rich, discovering how the
Graciousness joined with the Greatness, or Love with Majestas, is the
true Dei Gratia, or Divine Right, of every form and manner of King; _i.
e._, specifically, of the thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, and
powers of the earth:--of the thrones, stable, or "ruling," literally
right-doing powers ("rex eris, recte si facies"):--of the
dominations--lordly, edifying, dominant and harmonious powers; chiefly
domestic, over the "built thing," domus, or house; and inherently
twofold, Dominus and Domina; Lord and Lady:--of the Princedoms,
pre-eminent, incipient, creative, and demonstrative powers; thus poetic
and mercantile, in the "princeps carmen deduxisse" and the
merchant-prince:--of the Virtues or Courages; militant, guiding, or
Ducal powers:--