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. The General Government did not escape, but lay becalmed, or pursued its course, like a ship, at every furlong touching the rocks, or beating against the sands. The Capitol trembled with the first waves of a question which is yet to shake the whole land. New questions of exciting qualities perplexed the realm of legislation, and of morals. To all this must be added a manifest decline of family government; an increase of the ratio of popular ignorance; a decrease of reverence for law, and an effeminate administration of it. Popular tumults have been as frequent as freshets in our rivers; and like them, have swept over the land with desolation, and left their filthy slime in the highest places:—upon the press;—upon the legislature;—in the halls of our courts;—and even upon the sacred bench of Justice. If unsettled times foster dishonesty, it should have flourished among us. And it has.

Our nation must expect a periodical return of such convulsions; but experience should steadily curtail their ravages, and remedy their immoral tendencies. Young men have before them lessons of manifold wisdom taught by the severest of masters—experience. They should be studied; and that they may be, I shall, from this general survey, turn to a specific enumeration of the causes of dishonesty.

1. Some men find in their bosom from the first, a vehement inclination to dishonest ways. Knavish propensities are inherent: born with the child and transmissible from parent to son. The children of a sturdy thief, if taken from him at birth and reared by honest men, would, doubtless, have to contend against a strongly dishonest inclination. Foundlings and orphans under public charitable charge, are more apt to become vicious than other children. They are usually born of low and vicious parents, and inherit their parents’ propensities. Only the most thorough moral training can overrule this innate depravity.

2. A child naturally fair-minded, may become dishonest by parental example. He is early taught to be sharp in bargains, and vigilant for every advantage. Little is said about honesty, and much upon shrewd traffic. A dexterous trick, becomes a family anecdote; visitors are regaled with the boy’s precocious keenness. Hearing the praise of his exploits, he studies craft, and seeks parental admiration by adroit knaveries. He is taught, for his safety, that he must not range beyond the law: that would be unprofitable. 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. 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 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. The boy of honest parents and honestly bred, goes to a trade, or a store, where the employer practises legal frauds. The plain honesty of the boy excites roars of laughter among the better taught clerks. The master tells them that such blundering truthfulness must be pitied; the boy evidently has been neglected, and is not to be ridiculed for what he could not help. At first, it verily pains the youth’s scruples, and tinges his face to frame a deliberate dishonesty, to finish, and to polish it. His tongue stammers at a lie; but the example of a rich master, the jeers and gibes of shopmates, with gradual practice, cure all this. He becomes adroit in fleecing customers for his master’s sake, and equally dexterous in fleecing his master for his own sake.

4. Extravagance is a prolific source of dishonesty. Extravagance,—which is foolish expense, or expense disproportionate to one’s means,—may be found in all grades of society; but it is chiefly apparent among the rich, those aspiring to wealth, and those wishing to be thought affluent. Many a young man cheats his business, by transferring his means to theatres, race-courses, expensive parties, and to the nameless and numberless projects of pleasure. The enterprise of others is baffled by the extravagance of their family; for few men can make as much in a year as an extravagant woman can carry on her back in one winter. 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. 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. A wife led from affluence to frigid penury and neglect; from leisure and luxury to toil and want; daughters, once courted as rich, to be disesteemed when poor,—this is the gloomy prospect, seen through a magic haze of despondency. 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. Many there be who went weeping into this desert, and ere long, having found in it the fountains of the purest peace, have thanked God for the pleasures of poverty. But if your wife unmans your resolution, imploring dishonor rather than penury, may God pity and help you! You dwell with a sorceress, and few can resist her wiles.

5. Debt is an inexhaustible fountain of Dishonesty. The Royal Preacher tells us: The borrower is servant to the lender. Debt is a rigorous servitude. The debtor learns the cunning tricks, delays, concealments, and frauds, by which slaves evade or cheat their master. He is tempted to make ambiguous statements; pledges, with secret passages of escape; contracts, with fraudulent constructions; lying excuses, and more mendacious promises. He is tempted to elude responsibility; to delay settlements; to prevaricate upon the terms; to resist equity, and devise specious fraud. When the eager creditor would restrain such vagrancy by law, the debtor then thinks himself released from moral obligation, and brought to a legal game, in which it is lawful for the best player to win. He disputes