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uplifting of the people as will render, for instance, Tammany rule in New York, as Tammany rule now is, no more possible than it would be possible to revive the robber baronage of the Middle Ages.

Great is the danger to our country from the failure among our public men to live up to the eighth commandment, from the callousness in the public which permits such shortcomings. Yet it is not exaggeration to say that the danger is quite as great from those who year in and year out violate the ninth commandment by bearing false witness against the honest man, and who thereby degrade him and elevate the dishonest man until they are both on the same level. The public is quite as much harmed in the one case as in the other, by the one set of wrong-doers as by the other. "Liar" is just as ugly a word as "thief," because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law. Under the higher law, under the great law of morality and righteousness, he is precisely as guilty if, instead of lying in a court, he lies in a newspaper or on the stump; and in all probability the evil effects of his conduct are infinitely more wide-spread and more pernicious. The difference between perjury and

112 Eighth and Ninth Commandments

mendacity is not in the least one of morals or ethics. It is simply one of legal forms.

The same man may break both commandments, or one group of men may be tempted to break one and another group of men the other. In our civic life the worst offenders against the law of honesty owe no small part of their immunity to those who sin against the law by bearing false witness against their honest neighbors. The sin is, of course, peculiarly revolting when coupled with hypocrisy, when it is committed in the name of morality. Few politicians do as much harm as the newspaper editor, the clergyman, or the lay reformer who, day in and day out, by virulent and untruthful invective aimed at the upholders of honesty, weakens them for the benefit of the frankly vicious. We need fearless criticism of dishonest men, and of honest men on any point where they go wrong; but even more do we need criticism which shall be truthful both in what it says and in what it leaves unsaid-truthful in words and truthful in the impression it designs to leave upon the readers' or hearers' minds.

We need absolute honesty in public life; and we shall not get it until we remember that truth-telling must go hand in hand with it, and that it is quite as important not to tell an untruth about a decent man as it is to tell the truth about one who is not decent.

THE BEST AND THE GOOD

PUBLISHED IN THE "CHURCHMAN," MARCH 17, 1900

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MONG the people to whom we are all under a very real debt of obligation for the help they give to those seeking for good government at Albany is Bishop Doane. All of us who at the State capital have been painfully striving to wrest, often from adverse conditions, the best results obtainable, are strengthened and heartened in every way by the active interest the bishop takes in every good cause, the keen intelligence with which he sees "the instant need of things," and the sane and wholesome spirit, as remote from fanaticism as from cynicism, in which he approaches all public questions.

Quite unconsciously the bishop the other day gave an admirable summing up of his own attitude in quoting an extract from the "Life" of Archbishop Benson. In a letter which the archbishop wrote to his chancellor in regard to a bill regulating patronage in the Church of England occurs the following passage:

"The bill does not, of course, represent my ideal, but it is a careful collection of points which could be

112 Eighth and Ninth Commandments

mendacity is not in the least one of morals or ethics. It is simply one of legal forms.

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THE BEST AND THE GOOD

PUBLISHED IN THE "CHURCHMAN," MARCH 17, 1900

A

MONG the people to whom we are all under a very real debt of obligation for the help they give to those seeking for good government at Albany is Bishop Doane. All of us who at the State capital have been painfully striving to wrest, often from adverse conditions, the best results obtainable, are strengthened and heartened in every way by the active interest the bishop takes in every good cause, the keen intelligence with which he sees "the instant need of things," and the sane and wholesome spirit, as remote from fanaticism as from cynicism, in which he approaches all public questions.

Quite unconsciously the bishop the other day gave an admirable summing up of his own attitude in quoting an extract from the "Life" of Archbishop Benson. In a letter which archbishop wrote to

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