LYING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 171, 3 June 1862, Page 5

LYING.

(From the Saturday Review.) When Mr. Mill asserted that one great fault of the English poor was lying, he was met with an indignant rejoinder from those who like to give their poorer neighbors credit for every possible virtue, anil who have a firm belief in Saxon truth and honesty. I'he fact is, that such statements are either to be taken positively or relatively. If Mr. Mill was to be understood to say that, as compared with the poor of other countries, the English poor were given to falsehood, the statement would be of very doubtful accuracy but if it is merely an assertion that the lower ord r in England habitually tell lies, general experience innst decide whether this is or is not true. We feel sure that most judges would say_, speaking from their own experience, that Mr. Mill is quite light. Why Bhould he not be right 'i Truth is a very artificial virtue. It is only by the combination of many happy circumstances, by the accumulated stores of truthful feeling treasured uj> in many generations by 1h.3 finer and purer order of minds, that truth is cultivated, and ttiat the natural propensity of men to use speech as a vehicle for.concealing their thoughts and acts is overcome. Why should we suppose that the English poor ai-e subject to such very happy influences that, in their case, this universal propensity of the human race is checked'! Experience seems to show that uneducated people, as a rule, tell lies habitually. Even good, honest, well-educated servants, with principles high up in the servants' scale, notoriously tell lies as a matter of course. They are often truthful enough to acknowledge the truth when a case of conscience grave enough to alarm them is distinctly raised, but they conceal what they do with an absence of scruples which those more carefully educated cannot command. And if any happy person can honestly say, from his or her experience, that the sm; ler tradesmen in villages and towns do not habitually deceive their customers within the recognised limits'of the deceit permitted in their calling, we should like to know the name-and situation of the fortunate. place ' where grocers and butchers are so candid and straightforward. There are, at any rate,, many unfortunate places where this habit of falsehood rises like a barrier between the poor and the rich; and where those who would like to understand their humbler acquaintances are steadily baffled by the readiuess with which plausible statements are made up and adhered to in order to protect from investigation those who think any inquiry made by their betters is somehow likely to prove dangerous in the long run. There are, indeed, people who succeed to some extent in managing the poor, and by tact or excess of inquisitiveness winsome degree of confidence ; and it often happens that thess are the very people who entirely decline to look at any facts but those which have come under their own cognisance, and who insist that all the world shall judge from exceptional instances. But, putting these people aside, the experience of impartial observers is, we believe, tolerably uniform, and a general consent would pronounce that falsehood is one of the failings of the lower orders in England. There is undoubtedly such n thing H3 the English love of truth. Perhaps our lower classes never reach the recklessness and purposelessness in lying which distinguishes some Continental nations. And truth is a virtue most sedulously cultivated in the higher classes. Public men in England are expected to keep their.statements within some moderate degree r>f accuracy. It is one of the great successes of P/otcstantism, too, that it has dwell very strongly on me evil wliicli lying brings with it, and that m the families which it regulates, it instils a very great reverence for truth. It is quite against the English code of honor to be detected in a falsehood ; and many men who are not men of very strict principle would rather lose an arm than tell a direct he. Nor js .it at all doubtful that many influences are at work which are calculated to spread the love oi truth-telling. At public schools, where lying used once to be a matter of course there is now a considerable degree of shame in being known to tell a prominent falsehood; and those schools where the boys are prone to he are

noticed for it, andlmve a badn-eputntion as for something singular and unnecessary. It would also be absurd to question that the great spread of'religious knowledge which is due to the establishment'of Sunday and other, schools must have brought to hear on the humbler part of the population, to a very con. iiidorable extent, the repugnance to falsehood which is part of the essence of true religion. Where, in ■short, the best education of England operates, and I he high standard of English honor exercises its influence, acliaracter of general truthfulness is formed which perhaps is without a rival in the world. But thi'f does not alter the fact that falsehood is habitual in the mass of the population. And there are many reasons to apprehend that causes nic at woik which luay tend, if not gnardeu against, to spread falsehood even more than, it exists. If truth gams by what is called progress, so also does lying; and unfortunately many of the changes we introduce as social improvements, and many of the institutions we like to see more aud more widely established, bring a certain premium on lying in their train. Many legal changes, for example, which in themselves have boon very good, and which on the whole may have been attended with a very large balance of good, are calculated to make lying and perjury come more easy and natural to large classes of persons. The public has lately been startled by the strange conspiracy under which Mr. Bewicke suffered. Without any apparent object at all sufficient to account for the crime, three men combined to make it halieved that Mr. Bewicke had tried to shoot them, and they showc d the bullet that had hoen despatched at their heads. llemorse or vanity prompted one of the conspirators to reveal the crime and thus the frightful success which had bean gained by perjury was made known. But if it was so easy to get a man shut up in penal servitude by inventing a bare-faced lie, the opening thus afforded for vengeance suggests a terrible prospect'■ of the I temptations to perjury which our administration (f the Jaw may hold out. It is true that Mr. Bewicke d( fjndod himself at his trial, and threw away his chance of safety; but the conspirators could not foreses this. Although a survey of the . premises would have mado it clear that Mr. Bewicke, in order to have iired as alleged, must have beai in possession of a rifle that would carry a ball rounl a sharp corner, his enemies were quite prepared to take their chance of detection, and relied on the ease with which hard swearing may crush the innocent man. The establishment of County Courts, a measure most excellent in itself, has opened another very attractive channel for perjury to flow in. These Courts are so greatly in. favor of the plaintiff, that the defendant, i if poor and ignorant of law, has hardly a ! chance, and the plaintiff, we fear, often invents the I debt he recovers. The Divorce Court is even more fruitful of per) ury, for there it not unfrequently becomes a matter of honor to conceal the disgrace which her errors have brought upon a woman. There i 3 case after case tried in which there must be perjury by wholesale. The conduct of a wife is impugned, perhaps; and there is a necessity for evidence to go Ito a jury. Witnesses-have to be procured from among the sort of people who do not blush to admit that they accidentally see everything through keyholes. In i order to screen the lady, all who take her side, aud especially her lover, consider themselves bound to produce evidence that will contradict the I«-yho'.e people. They have got to establish alibis for her, or to account, by curious circumstances of family history, for the equivocal position in which she has ' placed herself. But this is not all. Very probably she likes to give as bad as she gets, nnd takes advantage ot the trial to brand with disgraceful! mputa- ' tions the fame of some fair neighbor, of wlijsj intimacy with her husband she has been jealous. Then a second issue is raised, and this row Desdemona has to explain how she' came by her handkerchief. All her relations come to support her, and all her discharged servants come to swear against her. As some mud ig sure to stick where the butt thrown at is a woman's reputation, this grand opportunity for a woman in danger to drag down some one with her offers far too fair and pleasant a field for perjury to be neglected ; and if ones a village or small town, where every one know.s anil hates another, gets into the Divorce Court, there is no reason at all why the proceedings should stop until the reputation of every respectable inhabitant has besn effectually and parinanently blackened. Other excellent institutions besides law courts must, however, bear their share in the propagation of falsehood. Above all stands conspicuous the Income-tax, of which the demoralising influence is not for a moment denied, and which can only be defended as doing, on the whole, enough good to counterbalance the evil. Political liberty, too, brings with it a plentiful crop of lies in its train. The suffrage has to answer for a vast mass of falsehood. Custom has, perhaps, a little blinded us to the greatness of the amount of lying that a well-contested election involves. From the noblest candidate to the lowest pot-boy, every one engaged in the election, and preparing to support a great cause by a little golden or silver or liquid persuasion, is, in some degree, tainted with,bribery. We are quite willing to admit that lies or deceit sanctioned by custom do not do the moral harm, because they do not involve the moral turpitude, which accompanies direct infraction of the rules of truth to which religious principle or the code of honor bids us adhere. It would be absurd to say that a man who had paid the last fifty impelled voters £20 a man was a liar. And yet botli he and those who have been his agents, and those who have taken the money, have been guilty o a deception; and a deception practised by a gre.'it many persons of different classes in concert cannot fail to have some bad effect on society. Nor are even more sacred things without some danger to truthfulness in England. There is sometimes a tone of thought and of speaking in English popular theology which carries its votaries away from the plain practical question whether they are learning to do well and ceasing to do ill. They talk a language .which spreads a haze between them and sober veracity. They are separated by an artificial barrier from the region in which the fruits of the tree are the thing that is looted for. In old days, there was less.use of theological terms, perhaps, among the uneducated, but there was a more rigid examination whether conduct was good or bad. We do not mean to say that this extension of popular theology is good or bad; only it inevitably has its weak side, in so far as it tends to substitute in some degree words for things, and to make people unreal and artifiical. The whole tendency of modern society, too, is to get more lax. Many of the ' old restraints which poverty, the inspection of near relatives, and the want of the means of locomotion used to impose, have now faded away. In tiuies when society was confined within a very narrow circle, and the example of one or two great people was held to excuse eve;y one else, greater liberty was not necessarily accompanied with greater deceit. At the Court of Charles 11. it was not bad taste to be aj merry as the monarch. But now that society is so large that i ash fraction keeps a watch on the other fractions, and the mere advance of the nation in right principles and sound education makes the maintenance of a higher outward standard comparatively easy, there is a constant struggle going on between liberty or license aud respectability. Changes of this sort are always much more easy to detect in women than in men, because the moral code of men is strict only iv other point 3 than, thos* raised by the freedom of social intercourse. But in womea there is visible the effect of a liberty that ha -, to keep if sJ.f within the p. th of decency. Young girls do things that are not perhaps exactly wrong, but which are at least dangerous. They are more reckless, and less jealously superintended than they used to be. They associate with young men with an identity of tastes and manners which was well reflected in the humorous sketch Punch lately drew of those figures as to which it was almost impossible to tell where the crinoline ended and where the knickerbockers began. But as good principles have certain weight throughout English society, and as an utter violation of decorum is not forgiven, the young ladies ar3 obliged to throw a veil over the little bursts of freedom in which they indulge. They are not bad or corrupted, but they cannot afford to be quite pure and simple if they are to retain their reputation as jolly companions to marriageable young men. This however, is only a striking instance of what is going j on in many ranks and under many various forms. Society, even down to the society that goes in i excursion trains to Brighton or Margate, has got more lax, and yet it hides its laxity under some kind of decorum. There may be advantages in this relaxation of the bonds of society, just as thtre are obvious advantages in cheap courts, and in income I tax and borough elections. But these advantages '• may be accompanied by a tendency to make falsehoods of more or less deep a hue flourish and abound; and if this is so, it is a fact to which attention can scarcely be too seriously directed.

A Negro Catching Deserters.—The other clay a couple pf recruits, wli? a weefc or twoa"2o had enlisted ia the 100 th regiment, deserted. They procured a small fishing boat belonging to a coloured man, and acturlly attempted to cross Lake Ontario — a distance of forty-five miles at least —to the American shore. But before they had gob far out, the African suspected thei.x intentions, and, procuring aid, lie slar'.el in pursuit, and came within hail when about ten miles from land. The deserters relused to "heave to," but the negro fired at them from a fowling piece loaded with buck shot, wounding both severely. Their capture was then effected, and they were brought back to the barracks. Upoon the person of one of the men was found a sketch of the new works just erected. He is said to be an American and it is rumoured he enlisted for the purpose of beingthe better able to act the spy.—Canadian Paper.