CHAPTER XXVIII.

A RETROSPECT.

I CANNOT conclude my story without asking, What constitutes honesty? and if anybody can give a really logical and satisfactory reply, I would ask him, Has he ever met a really honest man?

In the conviction of being credited with a reprobate mind, I freely admit my inability to answer either question satisfactorily. It is my experience, indeed, that no such thing as honesty—as at present understood—exists, and that it is simply a question of time, circumstance, or opportunity, although I have met many rich men who are credited with this undefinable attribute. That men of means are proverbially the best of fellows (I was once a “best fellow” myself) need not be repeated, nor will I insult your common sense, virtuous reader, who never did a shady thing in your life, by telling you what everybody knows—that their goodness increases in proportion to their wealth. Whether they are really honest is another question, and though no one would credit them with theft, would they be equally exemplary in regard to filthier and more nameless crimes? Why should a rich man steal? As a class they are proverbially mean and selfish. Why, then, should they worry themselves with such unnecessary consequences? That the highest of the so-called aristocracy are not above suspicion may be remembered, when some well-known names were once associated with a nasty scandal not entirely composed of strawberry leaves; and if their better halves were like Cæsar’s wife, the immunity did not extend to themselves. And a comparison of the men undergoing penal servitude for huge commercial swindles, bogus “cab companies,” and rascally prospectuses, with others at large, less fortunate in finding dupes, only proves that detection and want of opportunity have been left out of the calculation; that “not proven” and “guilty” are synonymous terms; and that at heart prince and peasant, duke and dustman, are alike desperately wicked. It was said, with a great deal of truth, that when a certain projector contemplated another gigantic fraud on the public it was his invariable custom to preface the robbery by building a church—a hint that was not lost on the observant speculator. In the same way, when a person thrusts himself into prominence as the self-constituted scourge of erring humanity, and is offensively blatant in his denunciations of fraud, it may be reasonably assumed in nine cases out of ten that the man is an undiscovered rogue, and fairly qualified for “Eighteen months’ imprisonment.”

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