Show official dishonesty its causa and cure the prevalence of corruption and dishonesty both in public office and private business has become a trite theme theme and mere complaints ou on the subject which do not pretend to investigate causes or suggest remedies have grown wearisome there are many to whom it seems never to have occurred that there must be a definite and powerful operating cause for an evil so general and arld who keep on complaining com pla pia ining and M lamenting about it as if they thought it could be removed by mere declamatory attacks from the rostrum and pulpit there is also a very general disposition to assume that the men whose integrity fails in positions or of trust are more lax in their principles than the mass of the community but the fact fuet is that one or of the chief causes of dishonesty in official personages is is the prevailing demoralization aliza tion of public opinion whatever we may say about it the american people taken as a whole respect wealth and the kind of success connected with wealth more than they respect anything else A tremendous change has been going on in the world more particularly in the united states since tile the parlier administrations of our government A certain class of sentiments which tend to restrain men occupying conspicuous positions from doing anything liable to dis disgrace grato grate them in the eyes of their fellow men has everywhere weakened the aa age has grown terribly cynical and b has as lost not only all faith falth ju in many things that our grandfathers believed in but all reverence for many things which they held sacred this has been the consequence in part of a vast increase of knowledge in certain directions which is not balanced by a proportionate onate increase in other directions in part it 11 the result of the growth of the critical and analytical spirit our grandfathers and great grandfathers had a genuine belief in such things as patriotism public spirit public virtue and they had a genuine reverence for public benefactors for men who had rendered distinguished public services and for men of high character and pure lives generally A good deal of this has died out with liero hero worship if wo we had another president in every respect as good as washington washinton ton he be would not r receive e from from the A american merican people the kind of homage washington received the fourth of july has lost much of its gloss and the fourth of july orations to which our ancestors listened with enthusiasm make us laugh in man many respects our forefathers seem I 1 like ilke ke children to the men and arld wo women men of this generation we understand human nature better than they did and yet wo we act and talk with reference to corruption in office precisely as if we retained their simple belief ellef elief in disinterested patriotism and in perfect characters altogether inaccessible to temptation we recognize it as a general law or of human nature that opportunity conspiring with great temptation will prove too strong for the virtue of the average man mail and yet we profess to be astonished anushock P when we ilear hear ofa of a person placed in a position where he has the handling of large sums of money with no emmi effi efficient clent check upon apon him proving a defaulter when lie he finds himself in a desperate situation from which the only means of escape seemed to be by the appropriation of funds not his own yet here thero is really no reason for surprise at such occurrences in the united states at this day and in fact they do not us with genuine surprise public opinion is lax in its view of such delinquencies they seldom meet with ri rigorous 0 orous punishment except in in very gross cases they do not affect the tiie social position ot of the guilty party these are some of the causes of the evil and the statement of the causes indicates the cure first a strict system of checks cheeks and balances and a vigilant atut supervision would effect much by diminishing the opportunity second prompt and severe punishment of a kind to bring disgrace boffl offers ers a weighty counterpoise to temptation if the government de faulders faul and others met with the same swift tand and terrible punishment dealt out to them in most of the european countries defalcations would soon become as rare here as they are in prussia or in france third if public opinion could be so elevated and pu purified rifled that it would really respect high character and unblemished integrity more than wealth aud arid success the natural love of approbation would stimulate men to struggle as earnestly to win and maintain a good name as they now struggle by any means and at all hazards to win the one tiling thing which in the existing stage of american civilization is more powerful and more deferred to than any other ri riches clies san francisco chronicle |