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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



formerly, we do not inquire; but their 

 extent is certainly alarming. It would 

 almost seem that overreacliing, and 

 circumventing, and the attainment of 

 ends by false pretenses, are becoming 

 organized in our blood, for "smart- 

 ness" and "sharpness" have acquired 

 new meanings and are openly com- 

 mended, and nothing is more common 

 than the remark that a little humbug is 

 indispensable in all successful manage- 

 ment. Certain it is that we are duped 

 and cheated continually, and in a thou- 

 sand ways. At home and on the street, 

 in the cars, at public assemblies, and in 

 all the relations of life, we are beset 

 and imposed upon by designing knaves 

 of every shade. "We eat the falsified 

 foods of the grocer, and wear the 

 swindling textures of the dry-goods 

 man. We are " done " by unscrupulous 

 shoemakers, and " sold " by dishonest 

 hatters, while builders construct for us 

 fraudulent houses, and upholsterers fill 

 them with sham furniture. The gas- 

 men and the street-cleaners sell us one 

 thing and furnish another, and, turn 

 where we will, we are plied with plaus- 

 ible deceptions, and made the victims 

 of ingenious rascality. Granting that 

 much of this is inevitable, it is certain 

 that more of it might be avoided, and 

 is due to that credulous state of mind 

 by which, Jike fools, we believe half that 

 is told us. 



If, leaving the sphere of private 

 dealings, we take a wider outlook, the 

 case is far from being mended. Under 

 our republican institutions politics is a 

 universal interest and a semi-occnpation 

 of everybody, and who does not know 

 that it is given over to interminable 

 deception and the rankest fraud? An 

 unscrupulous demagogism overshadows 

 the land and shoots down its multitudi- 

 nous roots into the same stupid public 

 credulity. "What else are our political 

 parties but contrivances for massing, 

 organizing, and manipulating, the gul- 

 libility of the people ? Year after year 

 they are fooled by crafty intriguers, 



and no braying in the legislative mor- 

 tar is suflScient to drive their foolish- 

 ness out. The patriotic perfection of 

 the partisan is measured by his swal- 

 low ; he must gulp every thing that is 

 administered from his own side, and 

 his steady and stupid faith is the stock- 

 in-trade of political gamesters. A mot- 

 ley crowd of those who have outdone 

 their rivals in the unscrupulous tactics 

 of the canvass get together in some 

 grand edifice, which from corner-stone 

 to liberty-cap is a monument of fraudu- 

 lent jobbing, and they then call them- 

 selves a " government," while the super- 

 stitious multitude hails the conclave as 

 the " assembled wisdom." Wise in all 

 the arts by which a credulous people 

 are deluded they certainly are ; for how 

 else would their lying promises con- 

 tinue to pass from hand to hand as 

 veritable money? 



Now, against ali this multifarious 

 imposture, this liability to be misled by 

 calculating knaves of every complexion, 

 what is our defense? How much is 

 accomplished by the 300 colleges, and 

 800 academies, and altogether some 

 2,000 high - schools, supplemented by 

 168,000 common schools, in the way of 

 guarding the people against the delu- 

 sions and deceptions to which they are 

 perpetually exposed? The common 

 schools bring the mass of them up to 

 the point of reading the newspapers, 

 and thus greatly increase their expos- 

 ure, but they furnish no mental re- 

 sources of counteraction. The news- 

 paper has its useful ofiice, but it is the 

 most eflicient instrument of a vicious 

 partisanship, and an instrument easily 

 wielded by designing men. The higher 

 institutions turn out the raw material 

 which is quickly Avorked up into knav- 

 ish managers on the one hand, and 

 credulous partisan gulls on the other; 

 for, as Mr. Carlyle remarks, "quack and 

 dupe are at bottom the same thing." 

 We find the cause of this wide-spread 

 evil, as the Times remarks, in a faulty^ 

 mental training which gives the culti- 



