Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1868-02-01

wholly against theft, without being ru-
| ined, What is bear combination to un-
| ddly depress the price of goods but an
elaborate theft We cannot, in London,
send goods to anction without certain
ty of robbery, and we are bitter, all of us,
against 'knock-outs; )" but who whips the
worst form of knock outs, the circulation
of rumors intended to make worthless
shares seem valuable, so that their hold
ers may plumber the unwary? When
bears run down shares there is indeed an
outcry, but when they run them up, who
cares for the plundered public ?
The very dislike of theft, unless COM
mitted by violence, seems to have died
out of the national miud. City editors
denounce search into robberies as "vin-
dicative proceeding" and advise com
promise as the only mode by which any
thing can be saved. Transactions which
are tIietts Of the most unblushing kind
bring to their perpetrators no rebuke, to
the sufferers no sympathy. If man
stands on London bridge, selling brass
rings for gold, the policce ultimately, and
as an extreme measure make him walk
on; but if he. robs a thousand widows
successfully, by a prospectus deliberate
lv framed to deceive, he goes at once in
to Parliament That, we shall be told,
has always been so; but the new evil, is
that we are becoming conscious of such
things, and still permit thdm and waste
halt our national energy i'll endeavors
not to put them down, but to prevent
Il h,.ool a c,o1n IL
erv organization we contrive is cumbrous
to decrepitude, and the reason is that we
dare trust no one that we know X the
work house master is left absolute he
will thieve; if he is only inspected, the
inspector will be ''made pleasant ;" if the
department is left to look after the in
spcctur. it will sell HIM immunity, not,
indeed, fDr cash, but for political support.
There is not Il department in. England in
which one-third of the expense might lot
be saved if men could be assumed to be
barely .'law-h honest" or in which, if we
did it, the nation would not lose twice as
much as it does. There is not great
shop in London whose proprietor is not
paving n third of his gross aggregate Of
Salaries to persons whose real work is to
prevent plumber, plunder now so dread
cd from its universality, that immense
brain has been exerted, and is being eX-
efted, to prevent statesmen ever touching
cash Mt all, TO enable children to do that
part of the work, as they do in managing
lotteries. Every public amusement is
becoming an organized arrangement for
plunder, every Invention of science, from
the telegraph to the patent office, is de-
vice to aid the quiet garroter, every need
of humanity is a new help to the dishon-
est to grow rich. Apart altogether from
the injury to the national morals, the
waste of all this is becoming pre- digious,
and will ultimately become unbearable;
will either produce a cure, or by engag-
ing halt, will paralyze it for progress, and
even for exertion. At this moment, the
country, as whole, is paying, or rath-
er beginning to pay, sumin enc depart
any other land. We do not hesitate to
say that the habitual dishonesty OF the
English, middle class, their habit Of thlev-
ing whenever they get chance without
actually taking silver spoons. will cost
England one half of the four or five hun
dred millionsit has expended on the rail
way system that ;he country is now
paying millions year in the mere effort,
Il resultleSs effort, to check official cor
ruption; that it is losing sums to which
even these are trifes, because great I'M
provements cannot be made for fear of
universal plumber. If Parliament but
knew where to find decently honest
agents it could rebuild our cities, rear
range or tenures, suppress pauperism by
insurances, pay half the national debt by
absorbing the nearly ruined railway sys
tent What stops, to take a single ex-
ample, State management of the rail
ways, which, by halving the gross cost
of communication, might double the ma
tional power? Simply the openly ex-
pressed conviction of mems mind, that if
the State had the railways Mr. Gladstone
is the only man who could be trustednet
to Job, them, that is, to thieye and
the still faighttuller latest thought Mr.:
Gladstone shows weakness, "puerism, y
in being so absolutely beyond suspicion.