he money before discovery can ensue, and pocket
the profits. Meanwhile, false entries are made, perjured oaths are sworn,
forged papers are filed. His expenses grow profuse, and men wonder from
what fountain so copious a stream can flow.

Let us stop here to survey his condition. He flourishes, is called
prosperous, thinks himself safe. Is he safe, or honest? He has stolen, and
embarked the amount upon a sea over which wander perpetual storms; where
wreck is the common fate, and escape the accident; and now all his chance
for the semblance of honesty, is staked upon the return of his
embezzlements from among the sands, the rocks and currents, the winds and
waves, and darkness, of tumultuous speculation. At length dawns the day of
discovery. His guilty dreams have long foretokened it. As he confronts the
disgrace almost face to face, how changed is the hideous aspect of his
deed, from that fair face of promise with which it tempted him!
Conscience, and honor, and plain honesty, which left him when they could
not restrain, now come back to sharpen his anguish. Overawed by the
prospect of open shame, of his wife's disgrace, and his children's
beggary, he cows down, and slinks out of life a frantic suicide.

Some there be, however, less supple to shame. They meet their fate with
cool impudence; defy their employers; brave the court, and too often with
success. The delusion of the public mind, or the confusion of affairs is
such, that, while petty culprits are tumbled into prison, a cool,
calculating and immense scoundrel is pitied, dandled and nursed by a
sympathizing community. In the broad road slanting to the rogue's retreat,
are seen the officer of the bank, the agent of the state, the officer of
the church, in indiscriminate haste, outrunning a lazy justice, and
bearing off the gains of astounding frauds. Avarice and pleasure seem to
have dissolved the conscience. _It is a day of trouble and of perplexity
from the Lord._ We tremble to think that our children must leave the
covert of the family, and go out upon that dark and yeasty sea, from whose
wrath so many wrecks are cast up at our feet. Of one thing I am certain;
if the church of Christ is silent to such deeds, and makes her altar a
refuge to such dishonesty, the day is coming when she shall have no altar,
the light shall go out from her candlestick, her walls shall be desolate,
and the fox look out at her windows.

11. EXECUTIVE CLEMENCY, by its frequency, has b