THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



119 



reached the climax of eccentricity when he 

 propounded his scale of integrity. He may 

 have intended it as an amusement for his 

 readers. lie says : V Of the business classes, 

 the lawyers are, by all odds, the most honest ; 

 next, the merchant ; and then, if you choose, 

 the farmer." Bishop Berkley astounded his 

 age by affirming there was no such thing as 

 matter. Some materialist equally startled man- 

 kind by denying there was any such thing as 

 spirit. But these men were in earnest — they 

 had a theory to support. The Planter, I can 

 not help thinking, was laughing, for he loves a 

 good joke. If he were not, I am sure the 

 lawyers and merchants were, when they read 

 it. The reason assigned for their superior 

 honesty is an additional cause for believing it 

 was a jest. But, unfortunately, his readers 

 thought he was serious. He says, substantial- 

 ly they are subject to more temptation ; ergo, 

 they are more honest. In that model prayer 

 bequeathed to us by our Saviour, we beg that 

 we may not be led into temptation, that we 

 may be delivered from evil. That, if not the 

 reading, is my interpretation of it. Lawyers 

 and merchants the first men in honesty ! The 

 former, men who sell their arguments, who 

 espouse indifferently the right or the wrong! 

 side of any question for a'fee, whose glory it is 

 to make the wrong appear the better reason and 

 rescue from the penitentiary and the gallows 

 those whose crimes would send them there by 

 the laws of their country and by the interests of 

 society ; to defeat law by the sophistry of 

 reasoning and the chicanery of pleading. Men 

 whose habits of sustaining any position that 

 may suit the case in hand, oftentimes so clouds 

 their intellects, introduces such confusion 

 among their moral perceptions that they seem 

 to doubt whether there is any right or any 

 wrong, any truth or any falsehood. Sophists 

 necessarily by profession and practice they 

 often end by becoming Pyromists, and doubt- 

 ing every thing. These are the No. 1. men on 

 the scale of Jhonesty. Next comes No. 2 men, 

 whose lives are devoted to traffic, whose pride 

 it is to make a good bargain, which being 

 translated, means to fleece their neighbors 

 when they get a chance ; to give as little as they 

 can for every thing they buy, and get as much as 

 they ean for every thing they sell. It must be 

 admitted that this is an occupation eminently 

 fitted to the development of high, moral quali- 

 ties. The men driven from the temple with a 

 whip of thongs belonged to this class No. 2, 

 who were accused by the Saviour of converting 

 the temple of God into a den of thieves. 

 Plato, as my friend no doubt, recollects, exclu- 

 ded them from citizenship in his republic, but 

 admitted them as subjects, being, as he says, 

 necessary evils. "As lor merchants and deal- 

 ers, accustomed as they are to lying and cheat 

 ing, they shall be suffered in this city (the city 

 of his model republic) as necessary evils only. 

 The citizen who lowers himself by keeping a 



shop shall be persecuted for such crime, and if 

 found guilty, shall be imprisoned : that sort of 

 trade is to be kept only for foreigners." It was 

 the custom, that is, the common law of the 

 Carthagenians even, that ancient nation of 

 shopkeepers, to exclude merchants from all 

 places of power, these being filled with the 

 landed proprietors. Cicero also writes, "what 

 honor can come from keeping a shop V Small 

 trade is a sordid thing: little tradespeople can 

 get nothing without lying." Mercury, the 

 god of trade, was likewise the god of thieves 

 and liars. I have no intention of applying 

 the sentiments of those ancient sages to 

 modern times. They are curious, as showing 

 the estimate in which merchants were held in 

 antiquity. But we have emerged into a day of 

 of great light. It is not to be doubted 

 that class No. 2 has much improved since 

 those days, but there is equally as little doubt 

 that the atmosphere of the lawyer's office and 

 the counting house is not the most salutary for 

 the improvement of our moral nature. 



The Planter places the poor farmers with 

 some hesitation ; he seems doubtful as to the 

 propriety of it, as high on the list as No. 3. I 

 wonder he had not put the politicians before 

 I them. We are thankful for that ; but we had 

 imagined heretofore that the farmers were the 

 bone and sinew of the body politic ; and even 

 more, that they were " the salt of the earth. " 

 There seems to be something in the cultiva- 

 tion of the soil, something in the daily depend- 

 ence upon our Creator to prosper our labors, 

 something in the pure air and the constant 

 contact and communion with nature, that 

 brings out, nurtures, and develops the reli- 

 gious sentiment. Vice is not in harmony with 

 nature, — it is a discord. It belongs not to the 

 smiling landscape — the forest teeming with 

 beauties — the green meadows :-^these all speak 

 of heaven, and the mind of man rises from the 

 contemplation of nature to nature's God. The 

 vicious man flees from such scenes, seeks the 

 crowded marts, where reeking crime makes an 

 atmosphere congenial with his own dark na- 

 ture. The fields covered with the rich man- 

 tles which a bounteous nature spontaneously 

 throws over them, redolent of sweetest odours, 

 delighting the eye and filling the mind and the 

 heart with images of beauty and sentiments of 

 benevolence, scenes that reflect the harmonious 

 ideas of Deity himself ; these and all such 

 scenes so favorable to our moral nature, that 

 inspires man with a love for moral beauty as 

 well as physical, cannot be grateful to the 

 man of crime ; must be distasteful to his de- 

 praved and perverted feelings. 



There are many other influences which have 

 a tendency to elevate the inhabitant of the 

 country, who lives by the cultivation of the 

 soil. The comparative solitude of his life 

 affords opportunity for reflection and invites 

 to serious contemplation. Thought, grave 

 thought, away from the busy haunts of men is 



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