p. 1 | OFFICIAL FLUNDER

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 11, 1877

OFFICIAL FLUNDER.

It seems almost superfluous to say that the most alarming symptom of corruption under the form of government with which this country should be blest, in every sense, has been the unblushing venality to be traced in so many official quarters. This is an evil which has increased upon us so rapidly that where a case of conscientious discharge of duty occurs, it positively becomes a matter of especial remark by honest people and of general clamor and outcry by the rogues. Not, indeed, that offices are generally filled by men who commence with thorough-going rascality; but one is used to hearing upon the street such remarks as these: “That place has a regular salary of $3,000 per annum, but he can make $10,000 out of it.” Again, “So-and-so is worth $200,000; but when he took that office, two years ago, at $6,000, he hadn’t a cent.”

Honest, toiling men of industry, talent, frugality, and self-denial, heard these things with amazement and aversion at first, but, finding them continually repeated amid the smiles and not the frowns of the bystanders, who were as likely to be men of note as any others, grew familiar with the thought, and, at last, insensibly lost that keen, delicate sense of rectitude that should have been their second nature. Then came, perhaps, the pressure of sudden calamity and poverty, the taunts, the sneers, the petty contumelies * “that patient merit Of the unworthy takes,” and, in some sad moment of forgetful despair, even a noble nature may have stumbled and fallen. Something like this may have been the history of many a heart that has been swept into the vortex of an evil time. Others, commencing with ripened knavery, and, finding little restraint either in the public conscience or in the barriers which law imposes, have not been satisfied till they have gorged themselves with immense sums of the people’s money.

We now look with amazement at the mountains of debt—State, municipal, and corporate—piled up within the last decade, large portions of the avails of which were stolen by those who had the handling of the funds. The wonder now is, first, how we could ever have permitted such a state of things to occur; and secondly, how we shall ever become extricated from the load. Doubtless it is easier to answer the first of these questions than the second; but one thing is certain, we shall never get out of the trouble unless we stop its cause. Public and official thieving must cease.—True Citizen, Sept., 1877.