While sufficiently acute
to prevent a man from doing that which will entail immediate injury on a
given person, it may not be sufficiently acute to prevent him from
doing that which will entail remote injuries on unknown persons. And we
find the facts to agree with this deduction, that the moral restraint
varies according to the clearness with which the evil consequences are
conceived. Many a one who would shrink from picking a pocket does not
scruple to adulterate his goods; and he who never dreams of passing base
coin, will yet be a party to joint-stock-bank deceptions. Hence, as we
say, the multiplication of the more subtle and complex forms of fraud,
is consistent with a general progress in morality; provided it is
accompanied with a decrease in the grosser forms of fraud.
But the question which most concerns us is, not whether the morals of
trade are better or worse than they have been, but rather--why are they
so bad? Why in this civilised state of ours, is there so much that
betrays the cunning selfishness of the savage? Why, after the careful
inculcations of rectitude during education, comes there in afterlife all
this knavery? Why, in spite of all the exhortations to which the
commercial classes listen every Sunday, do they next morning recommence
their evil deeds? What is this so potent agency which almost neutralises
the discipline of education, of law, of religion?
Various subsidiary causes that might be assigned, must be passed over,
that we may have space to deal with the chief cause.
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