Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1877-04-14

Sald Lord George Bentinck, who keep
racing stable can afford not to EN-
ploy his experience in making bets.
The speculative mania is the mania o
the day. Whether at Newmarket Of
in Lombard-street the prayer of oul
gllded youths and veterans is to be pu
on good thing and the exclusive OBJ.
Ject of their energies and intelligence
is to prevent this same good thing from
being accessible to others. Thus it is
that there has been gradually and al
most lmperceptibly substituted spirit
OF surreptltIous machination, of chi
cane, of trickery, for those magnani-
nous aspirations, which scorned to lay
their schemes anywhere except in the
open. 1t is the age of 'sophisters and
calculators. The worship of the
golden calf has been set up in high
places, and the golden calf is jeal-
Gus divinity. Neither man nor wo-
man can long have two standards of
truth and honesty. If to out-wit
friend and neighbor is the serious
aim of life, the moral habits which it
involves cannot be restricted to busi-
ness hours If the amateur horse
dealer enjoys a chartered knavery,
there Is no guarantee that its operation
will be limited to the region of veteri-
nary surgeons and grooms. Moral
habits are the outcome of association;
and when the genius of the betting
ring and the Stock Exchange has made
It's way into society and taken it by
force, 1t IS unreasonable to suppose
that the chivalrous standard of honor
will not become obsolete, or that the
old respect should be accorded to the
primitive virtues of honesty and truth.
The British aristocracy is in faetjust
now marked by those qualities which
might be expected In an anomalous
and monstrously overgrown communi-
ty. The distinctions between the aris-
toeracies of birth, wealth, and intel
lect have been swept away; the pro-
cess of fusion of the three is not yet
perfect. The old ideas of right and
wrong, of noble and ignoble, are dis
solved; the new ideas have not ac-
quired substance and form. What
was once an aristocracy, in the true
seuse of the word, is now plutocracy,
and it is the influence of the latter
which determines the moral notions of
the former. The nature and tastes of !
the upper classes in England have !
lent themselves, with fatal facility, to |
the educating agencies of the regime.
They thus add to the idiosyncratic
weakness of an old civilization the |
characteristic excesses ofa new. There !
is the ancient pride of birth which in
feets those who have no birth to be |
proud of there is the passion for ma
terial display-the scheming selfish |
ness, the complete Indifference to the |
feelings and the wants of others, the |
utter absence of that generosity in
small things which is the essence of
politeness. Lie and fraud are ugly
words; but are men and women Of
and honor common among
US? Falsehood has always been pc
feminine vice; but was ever
the habit of womanly mendacity so
rife as now? Men resent imputations
on their honor; but of how many
would the atmosphere in which they
i've be Judged by the quixotism of
heir ancestors to be free from inhu-
ences which necessarily tarnish honor?
Other causes besides those which are
purely social have been at work to
produce this confusion of ethical con-
,eption, this degration of moral stand
ards. As it is an age of greedy ac-
Iuistiveness, so it is an age of ignorant
of Grass Indifference to
he probable destinies of human ma
;ure. For few it is scientific age,
or few more an age of what the Lau-
cate has designated, in a phrase
which has been the keynote of pro
ligious amount of cant, Of honest
ioubt For the immense majority it
s an age of entire and absorbing neg
ect of all such things. The chaotic
which is now in the as
is uninformed by intelligent
deas on any of these points. Its re-
igion, the practical religion of its
very day life, perfectly compatible
With a respectable observance of de-
ordinances, is a crude, vapid,
mateTialism; a meterial-
sm which is not the result of settled
or even of lucid intervals
# consecutive thought, but of moral
nd intellectual stagnation. There is
vague belief in luck and opportuni-
y, but there is no particularly strong
,elief in anything else. Blurred ideas
nd fuctuating standards in all things
re the natural products of conditions
uch as have been here described The
aults, social and moral, of our modern
come from the fact that it
3 an aristocracy in confusion and an
rchy; and if in the midst of this
ONE traces of the primitive virtues
re to be seen, surely that is some
eason for gratitude.