s in the daily conduct of business, the habit of
relying on oneself and dealing with another man direct, must in the long
run breed a higher standard of individual business integrity.
Englishmen, relying always on their solicitors' advice, are too tempted
to consider that so long as they are on the right side of the law they
are honest. It is a shifting of the responsibility to the chaperon;
whereas, if alone, you would be compelled to act on your honour.

What I think and hope is the last word that I have to say on this rather
difficult subject has to do with the matter already mentioned, namely
the absence of the necessity of stamping documents in America.
Englishmen will remember that the Americans always have evinced a
dislike of stamps and stamp duties and acts relating thereto. Of late
years the necessity of meeting the expenses of the Spanish war did for a
while compel the raising of additional internal revenue by means of
documentary and other stamps. The people submitted to it, but they hated
it; and hated it afresh as often as they drew or saw a cheque with the
two-cent stamp upon it. The act was repealed as speedily as possible and
the stamping of papers has for six years now been unknown.

I think--and I am not now stating any acknowledged fact, but only
appealing to the reader's common-sense--that it is again inevitable that
where a superior sanctity attaches to stamped paper a people must in the
long run come to think too lightly of that which is unstamped. I do not
say that the individual Englishman has as yet come to think too lightly
of his word or bond because it is informal, but I do think there is
danger of it. The words "Can we hold him?" or (what is infinitely worse)
"Can he hold us?" spring somewhat readily to the lips of the business
man of this generation in England.

Continual dependence on the law and the man of law, and an extra respect
for paper because it is legal, have--they surely cannot fail to have--a
tendency to breed in the mind a disregard for what is not of a
strictly legal or actionable character. It is Utopian to dream of a
state of society where no law will be needed but every man's written
and spoken word will be a law to him; but it is not difficult to imagine
a state of society in which there is such universal dependence on the
law in all emergencies that the individual conscience will become
weakened--pauperised--atrophied--and unable to stand alone.

That is, as I have sa