duties to account,
and at a high price sold an absolution from their oath. While the
members of the patrician order bought and sold oaths among themselves
merely to deceive the lower orders, they were still respected among
the plebeians; but when they began to sell dispensations to the
members of this lower order, the latter also, by degrees, ceased to
feel any veneration for the oath, and it was no longer deemed
disgraceful to desert duties which the higher order made no effort to
render less odious.

'That they who draw the breath of life in a court, and pass all their
days in an atmosphere of lies, should have any very sacred regard for
truth, is hardly to be expected. They experience such falsehood in
all who surround them, that deception, at least suppression of the
truth, almost seems necessary for self-defence; and, accordingly, if
their speech be not framed upon the theory of the French cardinal,
that language was given to man for the better concealment of his
thoughts, they at least seem to regard in what they say, not its
resemblance to the tact in question, but rather its subserviency to
the purpose in view.' (Brougham's _George IV._) 'Yet, let it never be
forgotten, that princes are nurtured in falsehood by the atmosphere
of lies which envelops their palace; steeled against natural
sympathies by the selfish natures of all that surround them; hardened
in cruelty, partly indeed by the fears incident to their position,
but partly too by the unfeeling creatures, the factions, the
unnatural productions of a court whom alone they deal with; trained
for tyrants by the prostration which they find in all the minds which
they come in contact with; encouraged to domineer by the unresisting
medium through which all their steps to power and its abuse are
made.' (Brougham's _Carnot_.)

But Lord Brougham is too harsh. Johnson has observed truly enough,
'Honesty is not necessarily greater where elegance is less'; nor does
a sense of supreme or despotic power necessarily imply the exercise
or abuse of it. Princes have, happily, the same yearning as the
peasant after the respect and affection of the circle around them,
and the people under them; and they must generally seek it by the
same means.

I have mentioned the village communities of India as that class of
the population among whom truth prevails most; but I believe there is
no class of men in the world more strictly honourable in their
dealings than the mercantile