of a man's living in Delaware, a young man, some time ago,
came up to me on the street, in an Eastern city and asked for money.
"What is your business," I asked. "I am a waiter by profession."
"Where do you come from?" "Delaware." "Well, what was the matter
--did you drink, or cheat your employer, or were you idle?" "No."
"What was the trouble?" "Well, the truth is, the State is so small
they don't need any waiters; they all reach for what they want."

_Question_. Do you not think there are some dangerous tendencies
in Liberalism?

_Answer_. I will first state this proposition: The credit system
in morals, as in business, breeds extravagance. The cash system
in morals, as well as in business, breeds economy. We will suppose
a community in which everybody is bound to sell on credit, and in
which every creditor can take the benefit of the bankrupt law every
Saturday night, and the constable pays the costs. In my judgment
that community would be extravagant as long as the merchants lasted.
We will take another community in which everybody has to pay cash,
and in my judgment that community will be a very economical one.
Now, then, let us apply this to morals. Christianity allows
everybody to sin on a credit, and allows a man who has lived, we
will say sixty-nine years, what Christians are pleased to call a
worldly life, an immoral life. They allow him on his death-bed,
between the last dose of medicine and the last breath, to be
converted, and that man who has done nothing except evil, becomes
an angel. Here is another man who has lived the same length of
time, doing all the good he possibly could do, but not meeting with
what they are pleased to call "a change of heart;" he goes to a
world of pain. Now, my doctrine is that everybody must reap exactly
what he sows, other things being equal. If he acts badly he will
not be very happy; if he acts well he will not be very sad. I
believe in the doctrine of consequences, and that every man must
stand the consequences of his own acts. It seems to me that that
fact will have a greater restraining influence than the idea that
you can, just before you leave this world, shift your burden on to
somebody else. I am a believer in the restraining influences of
liberty, because responsibility goes hand in hand with freedom.
I do not believe that the gallows is the last step between earth
and heaven. I do not believe in the conversion and salvation of
murderers while