THE AGE OF THEFT | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 19, 1860

THE AGE OF THEFT.

The poets have sung of the age of gold and of the age of iron; they have yet to sing of the AGE OF THEFT. There have been governments where men have bought and sold provinces; have bartered victories in battle; have betrayed their country when at peace to the foreigner for gold; have sold their influence and their votes for money or for office; the historian has marked the era when such venality has been common as times peculiar for the corruption of its public morals and its private manners, times when neither the men were brave nor the women virtuous. But our own day has a more peculiar and far baser character. The treachery and villainy which the past has taught has been bettered for our instruction, and the vulgar knavery of theft has become the peculiar vice of our public men. To influence an election by the purchase of votes; to buy a representative by the award of a contract; to secure the success of some particular policy by falsehood and treachery; and to cover up all under some dainty form of hypocritical speech;—in political corruptions of this sort we rival all, and perhaps surpass the venal men and measures of other times and other countries. But we excel especially in larceny. No mere round about way of politic speculation for political purpose; no subtle schemes of knavish statesmanship; no partisan rascality for a party’s needs satisfy our public officers. With a greed which the wretch who steals only for his bread never feels; with an appetite for burglary which he never knows who seeks for spoons and purses under the excitement of midnight robbery, the custodian of our public money clutches the gold intrusted to his care. Nature for him has no parallel.

“The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction Robs the vast sea: the moon’s an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun: The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves The moon into salt tears: the earth’s a thief, That feeds and breeds by a composure stolen From general excrement: each thing’s a thief.”

But of all things that steal, there are none so shameless as our public men. Contracts with government are taken that the public may be made a prey; contracts are given that the opportunity of robbery may be afforded. Villainy stalks abroad with brazen front; men daily raise their heads which a felon’s cap should cover on change among their honest fellow men, and bow them weekly where their prayers are a bitter mockery. In the federal government, in State legislatures, in municipal affairs, hardly any man is supposed to enter with honest intentions. The best character that can be given to any candidate is, that he is so rich he does not need to steal; the worst qualification is, that he is so poor he cannot afford to run. The president authorizes the use of money, paid out professedly for public service, to be used to influence elections; members of congress are bribed directly with money thus obtained to carry or defeat a party measure; legislatures and State governments are bought at wholesale or by retail, at wholesale prices, as in Wisconsin, or at retail as in New York; cities are burdened with taxes which go not for the service of

tax-payers to clean their streets, to preserve their lives from pestilence or fire, but to fill the flaccid pockets of hungry officials.

One who has been a successful thief in private life is held by eminent commercial men as peculiarly qualified for the management of municipal affairs. Need we cite instances? Military stations, territorial bills, public printing, live-oak contracts, railroad projects, city frauds—a hundred instances of villainy and peculation will rise at the mere suggestion in the minds of the most careless reader of the public prints. At this moment a nine hours' wonder is talked over, a public fraud of years' standing, long known it is said, to heads of the government, and made public at last, not because the fraud is held as monstrous, but because the offender had been guilty of political insubordination.

"A democratic republic," said Mr. Buchanan, eighteen months ago, not long after he had encouraged the bribery of members to force the English bill through the house of representatives, "a democratic republic all agree, cannot long survive unless sustained by public virtue. When this is corrupted and the people become venal, there is a canker at the root of the tree of liberty, which must cause it to wither and die."

He only meant to round a sentence, but he rounded a truth.—Tribune.