Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century -- Fiction
The next day being Sunday, Mr. Eden preached two sermons that many will
remember all their lives. The first was against theft and all the shades
of dishonesty. I give a few of his topics. The dry bones he covered with
flesh and blood and beauty. The tendency of theft was to destroy all
moral and social good. For were it once to prevail so far as to make
property insecure, industry would lose heart, enterprise and frugality
be crushed, and at last the honest turn thieves in self-defense. Nearly
every act of theft had a baneful influence on the person robbed.
Here he quoted by name instances of industrious, frugal persons, whose
savings having been stolen, they had lost courage and good habits of
years' standing, and had ended ill. Then he gave them a simile. These
great crimes are like great trunk railways. They create many smaller
ones. Some flow into them, some out of them. Drunkenness generally
precedes an act of theft; drunkenness always follows it; lies flow from
it in streams, and perjury rushes to its defense.
It breeds, too, other vices that punish it, but never cure
it--prodigality and general loose living. The thief is never the richer
by this vile act which impoverishes his victim; for the money obtained
by this crime is wasted in others. The folly of theft; its ill economy.
What high qualities are laid out to their greatest disadvantage by the
thief; acuteness, watchfulness, sagacity, determination, tact. These
virtues, coupled with integrity, enrich thousands every year. How many
thieves do they enrich? How many thieves are a shilling a year the
better for the hundreds of pounds that come dishonestly into their
hands.
“In ---- Jail (Mr. Lepel's), there is now a family that have stolen,
first and last, property worth eighteen thousand pounds. The entire
possessions of this family are now two pair of shoes. The clothes they
stand in belong to Government; their own had to be burned, so foul were
they. Eighteen thousand pounds had they stolen--to be beggars; and this
is the rule, not the exception, as you all know. Why is this your fate
and your end? Because a mightier power than man's has determined that
thieving shall not thrive. The curse of God is upon theft!”
Then came life-like pictures of the honest man and the thief. The
one with an eye that faced you, with a conscious dignity and often
a cheerful countenance; the other with a shrinking eye, a conscious
meanness, and never with a smile from the heart; sordid, sly and
unhappy--for theft is misery. No wonder this crime degrades a man when
it degrades the very animals; Look at a dog who has stolen. Before this,
when he met his master or any human friend he used to run up to greet
them with wagging tail and sparkling eye. Now see him. At sight of any
man he crawls meanly away, with cowering figure and eye askant, the
living image of the filthy sin he has committed. He feels he has no
longer a right to greet a man, for he is a thief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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