ers throw around them, and _might_ be moulded in the generality of
cases, with almost certain effect, by the will and conduct of the
master--passes over, with an indolent and epicurean censure, the
lighter delinquencies which he may happen to detect, laughs perhaps at
his own laxity, and, when at length alarmed, discharges the culprit
without a character, and relieves himself, at the expense of he knows
not whom, by making of a corrupted menial a desperate outcast. If it
be said that a man cannot be expected to change his mode of life for
the sake of his servants, it might be answered, that any mode of life
by which each individual indulging in it hazards the perdition of
several of his fellow-creatures, _ought_ to be changed, and cannot be
persevered in without guilt. But even if no such sacrifice were
insisted upon, there remain means by which the evil might be
mitigated.

In the first place, the adherence to honesty on the part of the
masters might be exemplary; whereas their actual measure of honesty
would perhaps be indicated with sufficient indulgence, if they were
described (in the qualified language which Hamlet applies to himself)
to be "indifferent honest." There is a currency of untruth in daily
use amongst fashionable people for purposes of convenience, which
proceeds to a much bolder extent than the social euphemisms by which
those of the middle classes also, not perhaps without some occasional
violation of their more tender consciences, intimate a wish to be
excused from receiving a guest. Fashionable people, moreover, are the
most unscrupulous smugglers and buyers of smuggled goods, and have
less difficulty than others and less shame, in making various illicit
inroads upon the public property and revenue. It is not to be denied
that these practices are, in point of fact, a species of lying and
cheating; and the latter of them bears a close analogy to the sort of
depredation in which the dishonesty of a servant commonly commences.
To a servant it must seem quite as venial an offence to trench upon
the revenues of a duke, as to the duke it may seem to defraud the
revenues of a kingdom. Such proceedings, if not absolutely to be
branded as dishonest, are not at least altogether honourable; they are
such as may be more easily excused in a menial than in a gentleman.
Nor can it ever be otherwise than of evil example to make truth and
honesty matters of degree.

But there is a worse evil in the manners of this