EDITOR'S TABLE. 



267 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



A TEST OF NATIONAL MORALITY. 



THE forgery of documents for the 

 purpose of giving fictitious sup- 

 port to doctrines or to territorial claims 

 was a device not unknown to antiquity ; 

 and very severe has been the condem- 

 nation bestowed upon it by virtuous 

 moderns. The fame of the "false de- 

 cretals " still lingers in the world ; and 

 respectable citizens of our own favored 

 time and country are found wondering 

 how a high spiritual authority could ever 

 have consented to rest its claims, even 

 partially, upon so thoroughly delusive a 

 foundation. Circumstances, however, 

 as has been wisely remarked, alter cases ; 

 and that which was very shocking when 

 resorted to for the establishment of 

 principles in which one does not believe, 

 may assume a very different character 

 when found available for promoting the 

 success of the political party that has 

 the honor of commanding the same in- 

 dividual's vote. The "campaign lie" 

 has long been known as a favorite po- 

 litical weapon; but nowadays political 

 mendacity seems, in a peculiar manner, 

 to affect the ancient trick of forgery. 

 The last two or three presidential elec- 

 tions have each had their distinguishing 

 forgeries ; but the one just concluded 

 brought the forger's art into a greater 

 prominence than ever before. Men made 

 lies and loved them; and other men 

 loved to see the lies in circulation; and 

 others loved to delude themselves with 

 the lies so made and circulated ; until it 

 really seeuied as if, throughout a con- 

 siderable portion of the community, the 

 one thing that everybody hated and 

 feared was truth. 



And we are a Christian nation ! We 

 hold our heads very high in the world. 

 Our morality is not like that of the de- 

 caying states of the Old World, but of a 

 much superior type. We have no royal 



courts among us to spread servility and 

 corruption ; our working-classes are 

 taught to look down with infinite con- 

 tempt on the "pauper labor" of even 

 such a country as England ; our political 

 institutions give every man an interest 

 in the state; and such government as 

 we have is " of the people, for the peo- 

 ple, by the people." The theory of our 

 institutiuns, indeed, is very fine, but we 

 are constrained to say that the practice 

 is very miserable. To have political 

 power in our hands, and then to resort, 

 on a large scale, to falsehood — deliber- 

 ate, unblushing, reiterated falsehood — 

 as a means of influencing elections, is 

 about as shameful a thing, in our opin- 

 ion, as the sun shines upon. But, can a 

 thing be politically shameful and yet not 

 dangerous ? Fraud and violence are close 

 companions. A quarrel over marked 

 cards is very apt to be settled with the 

 pistol or the knife ; and, some day, if 

 political fraud should happen to be just 

 a httle too triumphant, w^e might find 

 ourselves precipitated into another civil 

 war. 



Why have we such tolerance for cam- 

 paign lies and liars? Why do respect- 

 able gentlemen, prominent in church cir- 

 cles, either help in the invention of such 

 lies or smile complacently at their cir- 

 culation? Why is the national con- 

 science so dead on this subject ? Has it 

 anything to do with the fact that as yet 

 the morality of science — the morality 

 that consists in the strenuous pursuit and 

 conscientious utterance of truth — is so 

 feebly recognized? We have powerful 

 church organizations; the whole land is 

 honey-combed, we may say, with socie- 

 ties for the promotion of a certain type 

 of conventional moral excellence ; but 

 what is being done — this, after all, is the 

 question on which the permanence and 

 prosperity of the republic depend — 



