50 Human Physiology. 



perjuries, as well as adulteries, and every sort of immorality 

 and outrage. 



It may be imagined that these statements are exaggerated, 

 and these charges of too sweeping a character. Let me copy 

 a paragraph on this subject from one of the most respectable 

 of English periodicals, The Spectator : 



" Perhaps no race ever existed among whom pecuniary dis- 

 honesty was so general, or so deeply affected the structure of 

 society. We consider ourselves a virtuous people, the salt of the 

 earth, and it is not too much to say that, at this moment, the 

 basis of half our laws the cause of half, or more than half, our 

 administrative weakness the root of three-fourths of our com- 

 mercial difficulties, is the well-founded belief that a middle-class 

 Englishman, if he gets anything like a chance, will thieve, will 

 expend his brain, his time, and his energies in able efforts to 

 steal money which is not his. Our municipal difficulty is job- 

 bery, that is theft the practice every municipality is certain, 

 unless watched, to indulge in, of robbing the citizens to enrich 

 its own members, or other favoured individuals. Even Parlia- 

 ment, even the Cabinet, the flower, or supposed flower of par- 

 liamentary life, is not beyond the same suspicion. Our railway 

 system is breaking down under habitual theft. Our commerce 

 is shattered at this moment by every variety of elaborate and 

 carefully devised plunder ; by companies whose prospectuses 

 are drawn up with the intention of robbing the ignorant ; by 

 banks which make over shareholders' money to directors; by 

 manufacturers who sell shoddy for cloth; by tradesmen who 

 cannot be trusted to avoid actual stealing of pennies from 

 women and children, actual theft of coppers out of a blind 

 man's tray, by false weights and measures. The worst of all is, 

 that one sees no cure for it. Every nation suffers from periods 

 of violence or of licentiousness, or of bigotry, 'or of apparent 

 weakness, and after a time they pass away, to re-appear at more 

 and more distant intervals ; but the habit of theft is in its 



