Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1889-03-20

ciches and I will keep my poverty and rep
utation."
The President of the American Congress
turing the American Revolution, Gen
Reed, was offered ten thousand guineas b.
| foreign commissioners if he would betra,
bus country. He replied, ''Geu.lemen, !
am very poor man, but tell your King be
IS not rich enough to buy me-" But why
go so far, when you and I, if we move 10
| honorable society, know men and women
| Who by all the concentrated force of earth
and hell could not be bribed. They would
90 more be bribed than you would think of
tempting an angel of light to exchange
heaven for the pit. To offer bribe is vii
lainy, but it is very poor compliment to
,he man to whom it is offered.
/ | have not much faith in those people
who go about Dragging how much they
could got if they would only sell out. Those
women who complain that they are very
often insulted need to understand that there
Is something in their carriage to invite in
suit. There are men at Albany and at
Harrisburg and at Washington who would
no more be approached by bribe than a
pirate boat with few cutlasses would dare
20 attack British man-of-war with two
banks of guns on each side loaded to the
souch hole. They are incorruptible mes,
1
the city and save the land. Meanwhile, my
advice 10 to all people to keep out of poll
| tics unless you are invulnerable to this style
of temptation. Indeed, if you are naturally
strong, yoa need religious buttressing. No
hing but the grace Of God can sustain our
public men and make them what we wish.
[ wish that there might come an old. fash
ioned revival of religion, that it might
l~break out in Congress and in the legisla-
| lures and bring many of the leading Repub-
iicans and Democrats down on the anxious
seat of repentance. That day will come or
something better, for the Bible declares thai
| kings and queens shall become nursing fa-
theirs and mothers to the Church, and if the
greater in authority, then certainly the less.
My charge also to parents is, remember
that this evil of bribery often begins in the
home-circle and in the nursery. Do not
bribe your children. Teach them to do
that which is right, and not because of the
fen cents or the orange you will give them.
There is great difference between reward
ing virtue and making the profits thereof
the impelling motive. That man who is
policy" is already moral bankrupt.
My charge is TO you, in all departments
of life steer clear Of bribery, all of you
Every man and woman at some time will
be tempted to do wrong for compensation.
The bribe way not be offered in money. It
may be offered in social position. Let US
remember that there is a day coming when
the most secret transaction of private life
and of public life will come up for public
apprehension. We cannot bribe death, we
1 cannot bribe sickness, we cannot bribe the
grave, we cannot bribe the judgments of
that God who tbunelers against this sin.
! ''Fie!" said Cardinal Beaufort, 'sfie !!
can't death be hireds is money nothing?
must die, and SO rich? if the owning of
| the whole realm would save me, could get
it by policy or by pur urchase--by money. y
No, death would not be hired theu; he will
not be hired now. Men of the world often
regret that they have to leave their money
here when they go away from the world
You can tell from what they say in their
| last hours that one of their chief sorroTs is
that they have to leave their mobey. /
oreak that aelusion. tell that brbetakar
that he will take his money with him
God will wrap it up in sonr sbrona. or put
it in the palm of your band in resurrection,
and there it will lie, not the cool, br,ghI,
shining gold as it was On the day when you
sold your vote and your moral principle,
but there it will lie. a hot metal. burning
and consuming your hand forever. Or, if
there be enough of it for chain, then it
will fall from the wrist clanking the fetters
of an eternal captivity. The bribe is an
everlasting possession. You take it for
time, you take it for eternity. Some day
In the next world, when you are longing
for sympathy, you will feel on your cheek
kiss. Looking up you will find it to be
Judas, who took thirty pieces of silver as
bribe and finished the bargain by putting
an infamous kiss on the pure cheek of his
Divine Mas er.
Another wrong use of money is seen in
the abuse of trust funds. Every man dur
ing the course of his life, on larger or
smaller scale, has tie property of others
committed to his keeping. He is SO far
safety deposit; he is an administrator, and
holds in his hand the interest of the family
of a deceased friend. Or he is an attorney,
aud through bis custody goes the payment
from debtor TO creditor, or he is the col
lector for business house which compen-
safes him for the responsibility; or he is a
| treasurer for charitable institution, and
he holds alma contributed for the suffering;
or he is an official of the city or the State or
| the nation. and taxes, and subsidies. and
salaries, and supplies are in his keeping. 1t
is as solemn trust as God can make it. 1t
is concentred and multiplied confidences.-
On that man depends the support of a
bereft household, or tho morals of de-
pendents, or the right movement of a
thousand wheels Of social mechanism. A
man may do what he will with his own,
but he who abuses trust Supds, in that one
act commits theft, falsehood, perjury and
becomes, in all the intensity of the word, a
miscreant How many widows and orphans
there are with nothing between them aud
starvation but sewing-n,achine, or held
up out of the vortex of destruction simply
by tho thread of needle. red with their
own hearts blood, who little while ago
had, by father and husband, left them a
competency. What is the matter? The ad
illustrators or the executors have sacri-
feed it-running risks with it that they
would not have dared to encounter in their
own private affairs. How often it is that
a man will earn livelihood by the sweat
of his brow, and then die, and within a few
months all the estate goes into the stock
gambling rapids of Wall street. How often
is it that you have known the man to whom
trust funds were committed taking them
out of the savings bank and from trust
companies, and administrators, turning old
homesteads into hard cash, and then put
ting the entire estate into the vortex O1
speculation. Embexzlement is an easy
word to pronounce, but it has ten thousand
ramlhcations of horror.
There is not city that has not suffered
from the abuse of trust funds. Where is
the court house, or the city hail. or the jail,
or the postoffice, or the hospital: that in
the building of it has not had a political
jobe
Long before the new courthouse in New
| Y Tx city was completed it cost over $12,
900, 600 Five million six hundred and
sixt three thousand dollars for furniture
| For piastering and repairs, 81 $40, ,000.-
For awsings, $23, ,553 The bills for three
months coming to the nice little sum OF
S13151, 1913 80. There was not an honest
brick, or stone, or latb, or foot of plumb
ing, or inch of plastering, or ink stand, Oh
door-knob in the whole establishment.
THAI bad example was followed in many
of the cities, which did not steal quite &c
much because there was not SO much to
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