Mrs. Alving: Oh! that perpetual law and order! I often think it is that which does all the mischief here in the world. "Ghosts." IBSEN. "Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit." "OTHELLO." That which people call thorough Respectability is, in the main, very bad morality. I do not state that the disease under discussion invariably annihilates the subject's sense of justice, integrity, and charity, but it does so in many cases, and in the generality of instances, it certainly perverts the ethical judgment. The true Respectable is compelled to work out his own social salvation and prestige by means of consistent duplicity and craft. He must be artificial to succeed in winning the popularity that he craves. He has, therefore, two sets of opinions--one for the sanctum and the other for the marketplace. For example, to satisfy the Brownian code, our Respectable, though he may be anti-Sabbatarian in private belief and practice, is careful to dissemble his views on the question. He probably goes to chapel, at least now and then, in order to maintain a reputation for Respectability, but he has been known to sneak by devious ways to his favourite side bar at the conclusion of his penance. Brown knows nothing about the side bar; he gulls himself with the idea that Smith attends Bethesda from a deep sense of devotion. But Brown is as great a humbug as Smith. Has he not been heard to declare in private that his regular attendance at chapel is a matter of business? And, as for Robinson, does he not absent himself from service whenever he is beyond the espionage of the Little Muddleton Road clan? I have even seen him fishing at Datchet on Sunday. I do not wonder that these three worthies distrust each other in trading. Each one is conscious in fleeting moments of honest self-introspection that the man who habitually deceives his neighbours concerning his religious, political, and social opinions, is scarcely the one to practise strict commercial probity. Nor, indeed, is he. Respectables who dupe their neighbours as to their moral and intellectual beliefs and convictions are just as likely to defraud them in business transactions, and I have never met an intellectual liar who was scrupulously truthful and upright in his business affairs.