Discredit

“ If there be error, it lies with the deceiver, not the deceived. And you, my sons and disciples, banish from your faces and your breasts every expression and every thought unworthy of your honest companion, and your upright sect. For remember, if to abhor falsehood and vice be noble, to distrust truth and innocence is mean. ”

“ We distrust one another, distrust those who manage public affairs, distrust our own fixed will to suffer the worst that may befall rather than cheat or steal or lie. Dishonesty hangs, like mephitic air, about our newspapers, our legislative assemblies, the municipal government of our towns and cities, about our churches even, since our religion itself seems to lack that highest kind of honesty, the downright and thorough sincerity which is its life-breath. ”

“ The grand foundation of your good character must be Industry, fidelity to your employers, and an inviolable attachment to truth, both in words and deeds. To utter a falsehood to the prejudice of others, argues malice and baseness—to lie in excuse of one’s self, guilt and cowardice;—in both cases it evinces a design to deceive, with a view to benefit one’s self by the deceit;—besides, a liar is always in fear of being detected, and if once found out, he sinks into contempt, and is deservedly divested of all credit—all confidence—and all society. ”

“ The first is, that although every officious or jocose lie considered by itself, is injurious to nobody; still, the frequency and impunity with which they are told, have a pernicious effect on the public; for they deprive the generality of mankind of a very valuable benefit. To make my meaning more clearly understood, I must beg every man to contemplate the inconveniencies that would arise from a doubt or distrust, whether whatever is told us be true or false; which distrust is unavoidable, and founded on prudence, if we advert to the frequency with which people lie. ”

“ The disproportion between the fact and the allegation only points the moral the more strongly against you; for the odiousness of your conduct, in differing with men in office and their sycophants, is such, that no colours can be black enough to paint it; and if you are not really guilty of all the petty vices and absurdities imputed to you, it is plain that you ought to be so, to answer to their theory, and as a fiction in loyalty, for the credit of church and state. ”

“ I hear it often said, ‘Oh, the people are deceived and misled by demagogues, on whom they ought not to place confidence.’ Why, on whom are they to place confidence? The poor people, when what passes before their eyes shows to them that those who govern them hold nothing sacred, and that the more solemn the oath, the more explicit the promises, the more earnest the appeals to loyalty, the more easy the perjury, the more barefaced the quibbling, the more gross the deception of those who relied on oaths, on promises, and on fair words? ”

“ But, my dear friend, if such be the penalty annexed to the concealment of error and duplicity by an ingenuous mind, even when that concealment is qualified by the powerful motives of preserving the peace and interest of all around us, what, I ask, must be the horrors of the mind, which covers, with a veil of darkness, the fraud intended to ruin the innocent, to betray the unsuspecting, and to defraud the ignorant? What must be the state and condition of those whose life is a lie? ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, it is no wonder, that they, who were in all things false to themselves, false to one another, false to their country, false to Heaven, false to Earth, should be monsters of ingratitude and treachery to a helpless peasant girl. ”

“ We are too much in the habit of looking at falsehood in its darkest associations, and through the colour of its worst purposes. That indignation which we profess to feel at deceit absolute, is indeed only at deceit malicious. We resent calumny, hypocrisy, and treachery, because they harm us, not because they are untrue. ”

“ THERE are few constitutional misfortunes that lead to more unhappiness and disgrace than a wavering, unsettled disposition. In all its aspects of ambiguous expression, variable opinion, and contradictory behaviour, it is blameable and hideous. It is always open to censure, and is often the parent of deceit, dissimulation, and treachery. ”

“ With this constant presentation of depravity, this incessant harping upon the one string of human dishonesty, what wonder that our visions should be distorted or that we should exclude from our horizon almost everything but the sinister features of modern life. What wonder that the young men and women should look at the career before them through an all-pervading fog of suspicion or that the days ahead [Pg. 6] of them should seem to be filled with the struggle against a universal dishonesty. ”

“ Avarice and ambition being its whole soul, what private morals will it infuse, and what national character will it create? It subsists by usurpation, deceit and oppression. A consciousness of fraud, impels it towards perpetration. By ever affecting, and never practising sincerity, it teaches a perpetual fear of treachery, and a perpetual effort to insnare. ”

“ And I do not in the least doubt, that when those in power begin to observe the falsehood, the prevarication, the aggravating manner, the treachery and seducing, the malice and revenge, the love of lucre, and lastly the trifling accusations in too many wicked people; they will be as ready to discourage every sort of those whom I have numbered among false witnesses, as they will be to countenance honest men, who, out of a true zeal to their prince and country, do, in the innocence of their hearts, freely discover whatever they may apprehend to be dangerous to either. ”

“ Hence it is also that many, upon receiving a piece of information, there rest themselves as upon a rock of certainty. Now either of these I consider equally blameable as they lead to distrust, doubt, and sometimes to a complete refutation or assertion of facts that very oftentimes cast a stain or stigma, sometimes upon the whole people, and without any other foundation than, as might be said, that all powerful veto. ”

“ Whether you examine the conduct of the nation at large, or that of its chiefs and leaders, your feelings revolt at the one, and your integrity despises the other. You see the idols erected by Folly, degraded by Caprice;—the authority obtained by Intrigue, bartered by Profligacy;—and the perfidy and corruption of one side so balanced by the barbarity and levity of the other, that the mind, unable to decide on the preference of contending vices, is obliged to find repose, though with regret and disgust, in acknowledging the general depravity. ”

“ His intimacy with men who have long since disowned all regard to decency and have become the daring advocates of every species of atrocity; his indissoluble connection with those, who, by their lives, have become the finished examples of profligacy and corruption; who have sworn enmity, severe and eternal, to the altar of our religion and the prosperity of our government, must infallibly exclude him from the confidence of reputable men. ”

“ Your accusation against us consists in this, that we do not wholly attain what we are striving for; that is, that we do not recognize violence and private property, and at the same time we take advantage of them. If we are deceivers, then it is no use to talk with us, and we are worthy neither of anger nor of being exposed, but only of scorn, and we should willingly accept your scorn, since one of our rules is the recognition of our insignificance. But if we are genuine in our striving toward what we profess, then your blaming us for deception would be unjust. ”

“ In our calm and unprejudiced consideration of these organisations, we are bound to admit that they have done more, and owe more for their success, to deception and error, than to truth and openness. Each in its turn has been caught in the act of deceiving, and has been frequently exposed, but of what avail? ”

“ This aversion to all kinds of disguise, whatever be its cause, is universally diffused, and incessantly in action; nor is it necessary, that to exasperate detestation or excite contempt, any interest should be invaded, or any competition attempted; it is sufficient, that there is an intention to deceive, an intention which every heart swells to oppose, and every tongue is busy to detect. ”

“ He must have established deceivers to mislead them with lies, to terrify them with the wrath of God, in case they stir hand or foot, or so much as a thought, to mend their doleful condition; as if the good God was the sanctifier of all villainy, the patron of the worst of all villains! ”

“ For shortly to say the truth, these folk falsely accuse and slander all our doings; yea the same things which they themselves cannot deny but to be rightly and orderly done; and for malice do so misconstrue and deprave all our sayings and doings, as though it were impossible that anything could be rightly spoken or done by us. They should more plainly and sincerely have gone to work if they would have dealt truly. ”

“ These, and others of the same nature, may not be held as opinions, but as evidences of blindness published by men of doubtful faith, wise, in their own esteem, and deceivers of the world, who, with lies and fraud, oppose the divine word, as St Clemens Alexandrinus says, closing their ears to truth, and blindfolding themselves with their vices, for whom contempt is the best reward.' Orígen de los Ind., p. ”

“ He who makes presents to a lady, or a minister of justice, attempts their corruption by the act, and in his imagination supposes he has effected it. You ought, therefore, [Pg 9] my Son, to consider every one who attempts to gain your favour by such means, as an enemy to your conscience, and as a person dangerous to, and one who would injure your honour; and you should look upon him as a man, more deserving of your contempt and indignation, than your courtesy. ”

“ Over-refinement, however, cannot be charged as the failing of most of our periodical publications. Some are full of polemical orthodoxy—some of methodistical deliration—some inculcate servility, and others preach up sedition—some creep along in a series of dull truisms and stale moralities—while others, more ‘lively, audible, and full of vent,’ subsist on the great staple of falsehood and personality, and enjoy all the advantages that result from an entire contempt for the restraints of decency, consistency, or candour. ”

“ The scandals of all ages, down to the present day and even to the end of the world—every species of error, deception, mad fanaticism, obstinacy and malice—were displayed before his eyes, and he beheld, as it were floating before him, all the apostates, heresiarchs, and pretended reformers, who deceive men by an appearance of sanctity. ”

“ Do you use this phrase to deceive those whom you look upon as being so ignorant, so destitute of reason, as to be deceived by idle, unmeaning words? If you do not, you are plainly bound to let us all know what you do mean, by doing "equal and exact justice to all men." ”

“ All the business of their families is done with deceit; whoever deals with them, they will cheat him if they can, which is easily done by those who make no conscience of what they say and do. Herein they overpass the deed of the wicked, v. 28. Those that act by deceit, with a colour of law and justice, do more mischief perhaps than those wicked men (v. 26) that carry all before them by open force and violence; or they are worse than the heathen themselves, yea, the worst of them. ”

“ God casts them off because they err from his statutes (those that will not submit to the commands of the word shall feel the curses of it) and because their deceit is falsehood, that is, because they deceive themselves by setting up false rules, in opposition to God's statutes, which they err from, and because they go about to deceive others with their hypocritical pretences of good and their crafty projects of mischief. ”

“ Finding that they could neither answer nor controvert my principles, nor put me down, they have been base enough to resort to slander, and to the most wanton and barefaced falsehoods, which they have trumped up to blacken me. ”

“ Imagine a worshipper forced to accuse the god above his altar of a base fraud, or an independent member of the middle class who finds himself compelled to make a charge of a dishonourable kind against a man whose name, borne by a long list of ancestors, is written like an endorsement across page after page of English history. ”

“ But the vast majority, including all those of the greatest value, can not be questioned without imputing to him a guilty knowledge that they were forgeries—a deliberate bad faith, of which no one, it is believed, has ever accused him. ”

“ How false their promises and pledges, how evasive, contradictory and mendacious have been their every act and deed, from first to last, we leave to the readers of the daily and weekly press for verification.
An edifice built on falsehood has no moral foundation, and must perish of its own weight. ”

“ Do you not offer them a mortal insult by presenting to them such nonsense as argument? And if your constituents were capable of suffering themselves to be deceived by such unspeakable absurdities, or to accept the insult without resentment, would such an attempt at deception under any circumstances be the part of an honest man? Is there really no blush rising to your cheeks when you look at your performance?
These are the three falsehoods which, when writing my last letter, I selected for exposure from a larger number. ”