Man is frail; but, next to sincere religious conviction, no principle exists so strong to control him as _noblesse oblige_--the impulse to keep faith and to deal honestly imposed not by his individual conscience alone, but by the pure traditions of his inheritance. The man who has the honor of his forefathers to preserve--an honor which may be a part of the nation's honor--is a hundred-fold better fortified against base action than is the son of thieves, or even of nobodies. The latter may find heroism enough to resist temptation, but the former is not tempted; he dismisses the thing at the start as preposterous. It is no credit to him to put such temptation aside, but it is black infamy and treachery to make terms with it. If he do make terms with it, no punishment can be too severe--though I take leave to say that the external penalties which state or nation can inflict are trivial compared with those deadly ones which torture him from within; but before crediting him with having yielded, the state or nation should not merely assume his innocence--a stipulation which our law indeed makes, but which is notoriously disregarded by prosecuting attorneys--but should weigh and sift with the most anxious and jealous scrutiny anything and everything which might appear inconsistent therewith. A son of a thief who steals does but follow his inborn instinct; but a thief whose ancestors were gentlemen is a monster, and monsters are rare. In England and the other older countries, the principle of _noblesse oblige_ still has weight with the public as well as with the individual; here, the welter of democracy, which has not evolved into distinct human form, uniformly ignores it; leveling down, not up, it is quick to see a scoundrel in any man. Meanwhile, instead of taking thought to abate the public mania for success in the form of concrete wealth which multiplies inducements to crime, it creates shallow statutes to punish acceptance of such inducements, with the result that while in its practical life it rushes in one direction, it erects in its courts a fantastic counsel of perfection which points in a direction precisely opposite. Our law tends not merely to the penalizing of real crimes, but to the manufacture of artificial ones; and the simple standard of natural or intuitive morals is bewilderingly complicated with a régimen of patent nostrums, conceived in error and administered in folly.