How Is It?

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 28, 1874

How is it that among all the men who have been robbing the public during the last few years we don't hear of a single one who makes any kind of restitution or ever seems to think of it? Defrauders of the revenue occasionally send back conscience money, but Credit Mobilier and New York Court House swindlers seem either to have no conscience at all, or to have it seared with a hot iron. Oakes Ames made a careful disposition of his five millions of plunder, more or less, among his family, but went to meet a righteous Judge without restoring a cent of it to the real owners of a large part of it—the nation. Brooks acted in the same way with his smaller gains out of the Credit Mobilier swindle. Tweed prepares for his twelve years' incarceration by transferring his immense property to relations and friends, but does not restore one cent to the city or county of New York, from which probably the whole was plundered. We hear no word either of restitution on the part of Connolly, Sweeny, Tom Field, Ingersoll, Woodward, Genet, or a host of others. Keyser is the only man who voluntarily pledged property to make good all that could be legally demanded of him, though he maintained that he never got a dollar beyond his just claims. His fault was that, when he could not get payment of these just claims otherwise, he made out bills and signed receipts for much larger sums than were due to him, the difference being divided among the ring swindlers.

Some of the bills and receipts, however, he repudiated as forgeries, and we do not learn that any steps have been taken in his case. In ancient Rome many men gave or left their entire property to the State. In modern times patriotism is not strong enough to induce public men to give the State her own.