c
men in national, state, and municipal positions, so much so that
rascality seems to be the rule, and honesty the exception. Real
statesmanship has departed from amongst us; neither the men nor the
principles of the olden time exist any longer.

The shameless cynicism with which the great public plunderers of our day
brazen out their infamy, is only equalled by the apathy with which the
public permits these robberies, and condone for them by lavishing place
and power upon the offenders. "The way of the transgressor" has ceased
to be "hard"--unless he be a transgressor of very low degree--and
rascality rides rampant over the land, from the halls of Congress to the
lowest department of public plunder.

The poet has well said that Vice, once grown familiar to the view, after
first exciting our hate, next succeeded in gaining our pity, and
finally was taken into our embrace.

The familiarity of the public mind with daily and almost hourly
instances of public peculation and betrayal of high trusts has created
this indulgent disposition, until at last the wholesome indignation,
which is the best safeguard of honesty, has been diluted into a maudlin
sympathy with the malefactors. And the rankness of the growth of this
evil is not more startling than its rapidity. It is a new thing--a foul
fungus, suddenly forced into fetid life, out of the corruptions
engendered by the war. It is "a new departure" in a wrong
direction--down that smooth, broad path to the devil.

We all remember the sensation which, before the war, was ever caused by
the discovery of a public defaulter, and the indignation which drove him
ever forth from place and country, on his detection. Punishment sure and
swift was certain to seize upon him, if he dared linger after the facts
were known.

A breach of trust was not then considered a joke, nor theft elevated
into the dignity of a fine art, whose most eminent professors were to
be regarded with envy and admiration.

Think of the clamor which was raised over the comparatively petty
peculations of Swartwout, Schuyler, Fowler, and other small sinners like
them, who even found the country too hot to hold them, and died in
exile, as an expiation to the public sentiment they had outraged.

Yet their frauds were as molehills to the mountains which the busy hands
of our public peculators have heaped up, and are daily piling higher.
Within the last ten years, where they stole cents, their successors
stole by