THE FISCAL QUESTION 121 



behaved in the same way amongst our children and 

 amongst our clerks, on the charitable board and in the 



D ' 



council chamber, in the pulpit and in the senate. 



We may concede further that some relations in life lend 

 themselves more naturally and easily to moral purposes 

 than others do, and are fitted to call forth some of the 

 virtues rather than others. The profession of the minister 

 or physician, for instance, naturally gives more scope for 

 the benevolent virtues than the trade of the retail dealer. 

 ( lt is probably easier for a professor to tell the truth than 

 it is for a politician even though he should be a professor 

 of Political Economy. He has nothing else to do except 

 to find and to tell the truth ; his constituency cannot throw 

 him off, nor his party leaders call him to account ; and the 

 public applause is not likely to turn his head. 



But to allow that some walks of life are more favourable 

 to the exercise of the virtues than others, is very different 

 from admitting that there are some circumstances in life 

 which call for the exercise of none of the virtues. It does 

 not follow that we can divide the trades and professions 

 into two classes, and call some of them moral and some of 

 them immoral or non-moral, placing the ministry, say, in 

 the former, and politics and international statesmanship 

 and horse-couping in the latter. 



The truth is that no province of life, no form of occupa- 

 tion, has in itself any ethical character. A man's station 

 in life furnishes him with the opportunity of doing right 

 and wrong, but it does nothing more ; and it can do 

 nothing more. That opportunity he may either use or 

 throw away ; and his profession derives its moral character 

 entirely from the way in which it is handled, and the 

 personality he throws into it. Intrinsically there is no 



