160 THE BEST POLICY. 



vjust majority of instances, honesty produces its 

 material reward, even here and now, wliile dis- 

 lionesty meets in the h)ng run with its appropriate 

 penalty. Of course this is true only on the aver- 

 age of cases. Nobody can doubt that there are 

 many men who have amassed large fortunes by 

 very shady or questionable means and who have 

 been in every way what we commonly call suc- 

 cessful people. To be sure, in a certain number 

 of such instances, the owner of the ill-gotten 

 wealth may have been subject, sooner or later, to 

 the pangs of a remorseful conscience — but not 

 always. It is quite clear that there are in the 

 world, however painful it may be to us to recog- 

 nize it, certain persons who are utterly incapable 

 of feeling any remorse whatsoever for the most 

 disgraceful or criminal actions, and who go to the 

 grave without having ever experienced a single 

 qualm or a passing pang for their most abominable 

 and atrocious deeds. We may shut our eyes to 

 the fact as much as we like ; but it is a fact, and 

 no amount of i^jnorinff it will suffice to render it 

 the less real. Cases, we must admit, do occur 

 where dishonesty seems to be, so far as the present 

 world alone is concerned, distinctly, from that very 

 low platform, the best policy. 



But such cases are, fortunately, extremely rare. 

 In the world, as generally constituted, the need 

 for trust and well grounded confidence between 



