thousands and tens of thousands; and, instead of flying from
punishment, flaunt their crimes and their ill-gotten wealth in the face
of the community, heedless either of the arm of the law, or the more
potent hiss of public scorn.

And this financial dishonesty of the times is as true of commercial as
of political circles, and as patent at Washington as at New York and
other cities. "Think you that those eighteen men on whom the tower of
Siloam fell, were sinners above all others in Jerusalem? I tell you
nay!" Think you that those six or seven on whom the axe of the public
press fell, are sinners above all in New York and elsewhere? If all men
that have been guilty of fraud in New York and elsewhere were to have a
tower fall on them, there would be funerals enough for fifty years.

One of the saddest symptoms of degeneracy in a people is evinced by a
desperate levity--a scoffing spirit such as that which inspired the
French people when they denied even God, and substituted a prostitute to
be their "Goddess of Reason." Much of that spirit is unhappily
manifesting itself in our country.

That most fearful picture of a corrupt community drawn by Curran in his
description of the public pests of his day--"remaining at the bottom
like drowned bodies while soundness remained in them, but rising only as
they rotted, and floating only from the buoyancy of corruption"--seems,
unhappily, destined to find its parallel here, unless public virtue and
public indignation should awake to condemn and chastise the corruption
which is tainting and poisoning the air around us.

The judgment which overtook the men of Siloam was visited on them for
sins not unlike those which seem to invite a similar judgment from
offended Heaven upon our modern Siloams, and is no jesting matter. Nay,
in view of the many recent terrible visitations which have fallen upon
different parts of our country, many voices have already been raised
proclaiming them as marks of Divine wrath against national sins,
perpetrated by a people who should, by their lives, testify their sense
of the blessings showered upon them in more prodigal profusion than on
any other nation in the annals of mankind.

That the great body of our people are corrupt, or that they at heart
approve of corruption, no one will be mad enough to maintain. But they
are responsible before Heaven and to posterity for the criminal apathy
they manifest in their silent sanction of the corruption and c