Henry Ward Beecher

“ When a man can seriously reflect upon dishonesty as a possible and profitable thing, he is already deeply dishonest. To a mind so tainted, will flock stories of consummate craft, of effective knavery, of fraud covered by its brilliant success. At times, the mind shrinks from its own thoughts, and trembles to look down the giddy cliff on whose edge they poise, or over which they fling themselves like sporting sea-birds. ”

“ Which shall he choose, honesty and mortifying exclusion, or gaiety purchased by dishonesty? The severity of this choice sometimes sobers the intoxicated brain; and a young man shrinks from the gulf, appalled at the darkness of dishonesty. But to excessive vanity, high-life with or without fraud, is Paradise; and any other life Purgatory. Here many resort to dishonesty without a scruple. It is at this point that public sentiment half sustains dishonesty. It scourges the thief of Necessity, and pities the thief of Fashion.
The struggle with others is on the very ground of honor. ”

“ If the capital is borrowed, it is as dishonest, upon such ventures, to risk, as to lose it. Should a man borrow a noble steed and ride among incitements which he knew would rouse up his fiery spirit to an uncontrollable height, and borne away with wild speed, be plunged over a precipice, his destruction might excite our pity, but could not alter our opinion of his dishonesty. He borrowed property, and endangered it where he knew that it would be uncontrollable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no property between it and the mind;—no medium to mellow its light. The mind is diverted and refreshed by no thoughts upon the quality of soils; the durability of structures; the advantages of sites; the beauty of fabrics; it is not invigorated by the necessity of labor and ingenuity which the mechanic feels; by the invention of the artisan, or the taste of the artist. The whole attention falls directly upon naked Money. The hourly sight of it whets the appetite, and sharpens it to avarice. ”

“ The safe enterpriser explores cautiously, ventures at first a little, and increases the venture with the ratio of experience. A speculator looks out upon the new region, as upon a far-away landscape, whose features are softened to beauty by distance; upon a hope, he stakes that, which, if it wins, will make him; and if it loses, will ruin him. When the alternatives are victory, or utter destruction, a battle may, sometimes, still be necessary. But commerce has no such alternatives; only speculation proceeds upon them. ”

“ Honor, love and generosity, strangely bewitched, plead for dishonesty as the only alternative to such suffering. But go, young man, to your wife; tell her the alternative; if she is worthy of you, she will face your poverty with a courage which shall shame your fears, and lead you into its wilderness and through it, all unshrinking. ”

“ No law can reach the insidious ways of subtle craft. The law allows, and religion forbids men, to profit by others’ misfortunes, to prowl for prey among the ignorant, to over-reach the simple, to suck the last life-drops from the bleeding; to hover over men as a vulture over herds, swooping down upon the weak, the straggling, and the weary. The infernal craft of cunning men, turns the law itself to piracy, and works outrageous [Pg 10] fraud in the hall of Courts, by the decision of judges, and under the seal of Justice.
3. Dishonesty is learned from one’s employers. ”

“ If our young men are introduced to life with distaste for safe ways, because the sure profits are slow; if the opinion becomes prevalent that all business is great, only as it tends to the uncertain, the extravagant, and the romantic; then we may stay our hand at once, nor waste labor in absurd expostulations of honesty. I had as lief preach humanity to a battle of eagles, as to urge honesty and integrity upon those who have determined to be rich, and to gain it by gambling stakes, and madmen’s ventures. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Men of notorious immorality, whose dishonesty is flagrant, whose private habits would disgrace the ditch, are powerful and popular. I have seen a man stained with every sin, except those which required courage; into whose head I do not think a pure thought has entered for forty years; in whose heart an honorable feeling would droop for very loneliness;—in evil he was ripe and rotten; hoary and depraved in deed, in word, in his present life and in all his past; evil when by himself, and viler among men; corrupting to the young;—to domestic fidelity, a recreant; to common honor, a traitor ”

“ Conscience, and honor, and plain honesty, which left him when they could not restrain, now come back to sharpen his anguish. Overawed by the prospect of open shame, of his wife’s disgrace, and his children’s beggary, he cows down, and slinks out of life a frantic suicide.
Some there be, however, less supple to shame. They meet their fate with cool impudence; defy their employers; brave the court, and too often with success. ”

“ No man could blow up his store in a compact street, and destroy only his own. Men of business are, like threads of a fabric, woven together, and subject, to a great extent, to a common fate of prosperity or adversity. I have no right to cut off my hand; I defraud myself, my family, the community, and God ”

“ He calculates his morality thus: Legal honesty is the best policy,—dishonesty, then, is a bad bargain—and therefore wrong—everything is wrong which is unthrifty. Whatever profit breaks no legal statute—though it is gained by falsehood, by unfairness, by gloss; through dishonor, unkindness, and an unscrupulous conscience—he considers fair, and says: The law allows it. Men may spend a long life without an indictable action, and without an honest one. ”

“ Let good men of all parties require honesty, integrity, veracity, and morality in politics, and there, as powerfully as anywhere else, the requisitions of public sentiment will ultimately be felt.
9. A corrupt public sentiment produces dishonesty. A public sentiment, in which dishonesty is not disgraceful; in which bad men are respectable, are trusted, are honored, are exalted—is a curse to the young. The fever of speculation, the universal derangement of business, the growing laxness of morals, is, to an alarming extent, introducing such a state of things. ”

“ Should the Atlantic ocean break over our shores, and roll sheer across to the Pacific, sweeping every vestige of cultivation, and burying our wealth, it would be a mercy, compared to that ocean-deluge of dishonesty and crime, which, sweeping over the whole land, has spared our wealth and taken our virtue. What are cornfields [Pg 34] and vineyards, what are stores and manufactures, and what are gold and silver, and all the precious commodities of the earth, among beasts?—and what are men, bereft of conscience and honor, but beasts? ”

“ Neither has a man the right to throw away his property. He defrauds himself, his family, the community in which he dwells; for all these have an interest in that property. If waste is dishonesty, then every risk, in proportion as it approaches it, is dishonest. To venture, without that foresight which experience gives, is wrong; and if we cannot foresee, then we must not venture.
Scheming speculation demoralizes honesty, and almost necessitates dishonesty. He who puts his own interests to rash ventures, will scarcely do better for others. ”

“ At length the sufferer drags his mutilated carcass aside, every nerve and muscle wrung with pain, and his whole body an instrument of agony. He curses the whole inhuman crew with envenomed imprecations; and thenceforth, a brooding misanthrope, he pays back to society, by studied villanies, the legal wrongs which the relentless justice of a few, or his own knavery, have brought upon him. ”

“ Should they act with the lenity of Christian men, and he with manly honesty, promptly rendering up whatever satisfaction of debt he has,—he may visit the lowest places of human adversity, and find there the light of good men’s esteem, the support of conscience, and the sustenance of religion.
A bankrupt may fall into the hands of men whose tender-mercies are cruel; or his dishonest equivocations may exasperate their temper and provoke every thorn and brier of the law. When men’s passions are let loose, especially their avarice whetted by real or imaginary wrong ”

“ The delusion of the public mind, or the confusion of affairs is such, that, while petty culprits are tumbled into prison, a cool, calculating and immense scoundrel is pitied, dandled and nursed by a sympathizing community. ”

“ When the solemn voice of Religion should have gone over the land, as the call of God to guilty man to seek in him their strength; in this time when Religion should have restored sight to the blind, made the lame to walk, and bound up the broken-hearted, she was herself mourning in sackcloth. ”

“ The mind has no kitchen to do its dirty work in, while the parlor remains clean. Dishonesty is an atmosphere; if it comes into one apartment, it penetrates into every one. Whoever will lie in politics, will lie in traffic. Whoever will slander in politics, will slander in personal squabbles. A professor of religion who is a dishonest politician, is a dishonest Christian. ”

“ Upon a land,—capacious beyond measure, whose prodigal soil rewards labor with an unharvestable abundance of exuberant fruits, occupied by a people signalized by enterprise and industry—there came a summer of prosperity which lingered so long and shone so brightly, that men forgot that winter could ever come. ”

“ Thus the tempest will grow blacker and fiercer. Our youth will be caught up in its whirling bosom and dashed to pieces, and its hail will break down every green thing. At God’s house the cure should begin. ”

“ TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY
Only extraordinary circumstances can give the appearance of dishonesty to an honest man. Usually, not to seem honest, is not to be so. The quality must not be doubtful like twilight, lingering between night and day and taking hues from both; it must be day-light, clear, and effulgent. This is the doctrine of the Bible: Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men. In general it may be said that no one has honesty without dross, until he has honesty without suspicion. ”

“ Commercial speculations are prolific of Dishonesty. Speculation is the risking of capital in enterprises greater than we can control, or in enterprises whose elements are not at all calculable. All calculations of the future are uncertain; but those which are based upon long experience approximate [Pg 30] certainty, while those which are drawn by sagacity from probable events, are notoriously unsafe. Unless, however, some venture, we shall forever tread an old and dull path; therefore enterprise is allowed to pioneer new ways. ”

“ There is a circle of moral dishonesties practised because the law allows them. The very anxiety of law to reach the devices of cunning, so perplexes its statutes with exceptions, limitations, and supplements, that like a castle gradually enlarged for 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. ”

“ The mind wanders in dreams of gain; it broods over projects of unlawful riches; stealthily at first, and then with less reserve; at last it boldly meditates the possibility of being dishonest and safe. ”

“ In every age, an universal pestilence has hushed the clamor of contention, and cooled [Pg 7] the heats of parties; but the greatness of our national calamity seemed only to enkindle the fury of political parties. Contentions never ran with such deep streams and impetuous currents, as amidst the ruin of our industry and prosperity. States were greater debtors to foreign nations, than their citizens were to each other. Both states and citizens shrunk back from their debts, and yet more dishonestly from the taxes necessary to discharge them. ”

“ Executive clemency, by its frequency, has been a temptation to Dishonesty. Who will fear to be a culprit when a legal sentence is the argument of pity, and the prelude of pardon? What can the community expect but growing dishonesty, when juries connive at acquittals, and judges condemn only to petition a pardon; when honest men and officers fly before a mob ”

“ Some are ambitious of fashionable society, and will gratify their vanity at any expense. This disproportion between means and expense soon brings on a crisis. The victim is straitened for money; without it he must abandon his rank; for fashionable society remorselessly rejects all butterflies which have lost their brilliant colors. ”