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Show CAN HONESTY BECOME C0NTAGI0TJS1 The Monetary and Mining Gazette iu speaking of Live mischovious ascendancy ascend-ancy of very common practices in trade, finance and moral intercourse, under the caption "The Contagion ol Honesty," warns the reformer that his task will ho formidable. Politics, theology and financo are equally demoralized; de-moralized; nothing human being an exception. Political parties cnislr each other, institutions in finance undermine each other's reputation, and tho church, become almost entirely en-tirely mundane the&e days, bus grown lax in morals and indifferent ns to faith, but fearfully cruel in'wielding the spiritual (?) swoid against both ..... f,l.. v.,..-.r.1,ta olilo rt'lWIUIClS I'll" 1" 1- l-M'V"1-'"3 Religious reform, when treated as harmliss fully, is too apt to have its advrcal.es regarded as enthusiastic fanatics. This we behold every day in free America. Material interest combines, behind ita entrenchments, the taint and the sinner; sentiment, morals, chastity, religion, and trade must bend to it, or be broken and crushed into powder. Chivalry has ceased to fire at long range. Now a fight is to the death; rivals meet with lilted sword and well-pointed well-pointed lance no locger, it is the fierce hand-to-hand cut, thrust or pistol shot; unc or the other must fall in death or linger iu mutilation. Trade on Christian principles is a delusion, de-lusion, a thing of past days, and esteemed es-teemed to have existed in days of lit-tlo lit-tlo light and much credulity. Whoever Who-ever is moved by motives of integrity must not meddle with financial things as they exist, and as such are regard- cd respectable; the financier having hav-ing too often the poison ol an asp under un-der his tongue. Trade reciprocity is swallowed up in competition, and commercial activities arc exhibitions of fierce antagonism; a battle, not for a common good to persons, or for the upholding of a commonwealth, but for personal nggrandizenient and selfish gratification. The prevalence is everywhere of the belief that money is a universal good, and that he is the better man that get,-; the most of it, or has the control of the largest amount belonging Jo others. "Experience has taught us that the money iutere&t, as eueh, stands in direct antagonism to trade and to tho community at large, and that it exacts its yearly tribute under all condition?, whether of profit or loss." The task mil b rs of Turkey, w ho lend her eigMy-tive millionF, force on her i i con iderHti'..n a liability of one hundred a d eighty million, nd precipitate her downfall; it ib eo wi h the enl-rpr.s.ini' loan-mongers wbo biri crippled nua well-nigh dtatioyed tho sploudid couii-tri-g of Sou til and Ontal America, about which wo havo luitly tuard bo much. H h so with our own financier-1, who by Uitir exi'aiio-vo credits have brought ninny f out lino indd&tri'is lo ruin, and by th ir loans, commissions, interests, ch'Tiies, reslrmnta and cnnicu-titioriB cnnicu-titioriB have litoiauy destroyed our eastern east-ern trade. |