which humbug is not very often
an instrumentality. Religion is and has ever been a chief chapter of
human life. False religions are the only ones known to two thirds of the
human race, even now, after nineteen centuries of Christianity; and
false religions are perhaps the most monstrous, complicated and
thorough-going specimens of humbug that can be found. And even within
the pale of Christianity, how unbroken has been the succession of
impostors, hypocrites and pretenders, male and female, of every
possible variety of age, sex, doctrine and discipline!

Politics and government are certainly among the most important of
practical human interests. Now it was a diplomatist--that is, a
practical manager of one kind of government matters--who invented that
wonderful phrase--a whole world full of humbug in half-a-dozen
words--that "Language was given to us to conceal our thoughts." It was
another diplomatist, who said "An ambassador is a gentleman sent to
_lie_ abroad for the good of his country." But need I explain to my own
beloved countrymen that there is humbug in politics? Does anybody go
into a political campaign without it? are no exaggerations of _our_
candidate's merits to be allowed? no depreciations of the _other_
candidate? Shall we no longer prove that the success of the party
opposed to us will overwhelm the land in ruin? Let me see. Leaving out
the two elections of General Washington, eighteen times that very fact
has been proved by the party that was beaten, and immediately we have
_not_ been ruined, notwithstanding that the dreadful fatal fellows on
the other side got their hands on the offices and their fingers into the
treasury.

Business is the ordinary means of living for nearly all of us. And in
what business is there not humbug? "There's cheating in all trades but
ours," is the prompt reply from the boot-maker with his brown paper
soles, the grocer with his floury sugar and chicoried coffee, the
butcher with his mysterious sausages and queer veal, the dry goods man
with his "damaged goods wet at the great fire" and his "selling at a
ruinous loss," the stock-broker with his brazen assurance that your
company is bankrupt and your stock not worth a cent (if he wants to buy
it,) the horse jockey with his black arts and spavined brutes, the
milkman with his tin aquaria, the land agent with his nice new maps and
beautiful descriptions of distant scenery, the newspaper man with his
"immense circulation," th