The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-21

asters of the Crimea and of the Franco
Prussian war of 1870 will not teach how un-
limited is the consequence of every i'm
morality committed against the State, how
rapidly the infection of sins against the State,
or against any molecule of the State, spreads
till all its strength is undermined, and il is
left mere name for rope of sand, what
moral lesson can be taught at all We
cannot but believe that it would be quite
easy to diffuse tone of morality in which
cheating the State would be regarded
as the next thing to blasphemy-in fact as
cheating of an infinitely deeper dye, instead
of less guilty kind, than the cheating of
individuals. So far, of course, as the mere
dishonesty is concerned, there is no choice
between cheating an individual and cheating a
community. But so far as the consequences
go, every man feels that stealing from poor
man is worse than stealing from a rich to
the same extent, and that theft which ruins
is worse than theft the effect of which is
hardly perceived. 1t is impossible to teach
children that stealing from the State is the
stealing which ruins, is the stealing from the
poor man whose wages form the revenue of
the State; that stealing from corporation is
stealing health and happiness from the
population over whose health and happiness
that corporation is the sole guardian; that
stealing from the army is stealing from the
poor men who guard England; that stealing
even from the treasury is stealing from the
resources by which the poor combine to pro-
cure for themselves a good governments
that stealing from any department of the
State is the wilful introduction of a most
contagious disease which ends in death? One
would think nothing easier than to make it
evident, even to children, that the peculiar
defenselessness of the State, in the deficiency
among its guardians of that vivid self-interest
which protects private interests, adds, like
the helplessness of the blind man against
those who would plumber him, a new igno-
miny to any fraud committed upon it. And
if with this be combined the immense area
over which fraud against the public interests
spreads, if it spreads at all, and the terrible
destruction it breeds, one would suppose it
quite possible to SOW anew in the public the
ancient feeling that any sin of this kind
against the organ of the people is really more
guilty, instead of less SO, than like sin
against an individual. In truth, the religious
feeling which substitutes God for
the object of every guilty ac-
ton, great or small, while it has
done a great deal to strengthen private
morality, has done a good deal to weaken
relatively the springs of public morality, by
rendering those who have no religious feel
ing Comparatively Indifferent to all offences
which are not on the face of them productive
of immediate pain and suffering. Many q
man who would not for his life rob widow
OF an orphan will think nothing of robbing
department. Surely it is possible to
introduce into elementary schools
enough explanation of the result to
innumerable more helpless persons
than widows and orphans of robbing depart
ments-the fearful result, too, in the way of
making widows and orphans-to inspire all
men who have any vestige of moral feeling
at all with a certain sense that the State is far
more sacred than any individual-that il
really represents the strength and shield of
millions of individuals, who will be not only
less happy, but less noble, less honorable,
less just, less generous beings, if the State be
once turned to ignoble uses by selfish and
vulgar men.