THE EIGHTH AND NINTH COMMAND 

 MENTS IN POLITICS 



PUBLISHED IN THE "OUTLOOK," MAY 12, 1900 



THE two commandments which are specially ap 

 plicable in public life are the eighth and the 

 ninth. Not only every politician, high or low, but 

 every citizen interested in politics, and especially 

 every man who, in a newspaper or on the stump, 

 advocates or condemns any public policy or any 

 public man, should remember always that the two 

 cardinal points in his doctrine ought to be, "Thou 

 shalt not steal," and "Thou shalt not bear false wit 

 ness against thy neighbor." He should also, of 

 course, remember that the multitude of men who 

 break the moral law expressed in these two com 

 mandments are not to be justified because they keep 

 out of the clutches of the human law. Robbery and 

 theft, perjury and subornation of perjury, are crimes 

 punishable by the courts; but many a man who 

 technically never commits any one of these crimes 

 is yet morally quite as guilty as is his less adroit 

 but not more wicked, and possibly infinitely less 

 dangerous, brother who gets into the penitentiary. 



(107) 



