If we reflect but for a moment on the vast amount of wealth daily
entrusted even to subordinate persons, who themselves probably earn
but a bare competency--the loose cash which is constantly passing
through the hands of shopmen, agents, brokers, and clerks in
banking houses,--and note how comparatively few are the breaches of
trust which occur amidst all this temptation, it will probably be
admitted that this steady daily honesty of conduct is most
honourable to human nature, if it do not even tempt us to be proud
of it. The same trust and confidence reposed by men of business in
each other, as implied by the system of Credit, which is mainly
based upon the principle of honour, would be surprising if it were
not so much a matter of ordinary practice in business transactions.
Dr. Chalmers has well said, that the implicit trust with which
merchants are accustomed to confide in distant agents, separated
from them perhaps by half the globe--often consigning vast wealth
to persons, recommended only by their character, whom perhaps they
have never seen--is probably the finest act of homage which men can
render to one another.
Although common honesty is still happily in the ascendant amongst
common people, and the general business community of England is
still sound at heart, putting their honest character into their
respective callings,--there are unhappily, as there have been in
all times, but too many instances of flagrant dishonesty and fraud,
exhibited by the unscrupulous, the over-speculative, and the
intensely selfish in their haste to be rich.
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