To record a vote simply to please some one else is only one degree
baser than to barter it for money or money's worth, and indeed it is
often only an indirect mode of doing the same thing.
There is a large class of cases, primarily affecting individuals rather
than society at large, which, if we look a little below the surface and
trace their results, are of a much more pernicious character than is
usually recognised, and, as ethical knowledge increases, ought to incur
far more severe reprobation than they now do. Foremost amongst these is
what I may call the current morality of debts. A man incurs a debt with
a tradesman which he has no intention or no reasonable prospect of
paying, knowing that the tradesman has no grounds for suspecting his
inability to pay. The tradesman parts with the goods, supposing that he
will receive the equivalent; the customer carries them off, knowing that
this equivalent is not, and is not likely to be, forthcoming. I confess
that I am entirely unable to distinguish this case from that of ordinary
theft. And still there is many a man, well received in society, who
habitually acts in this manner, and whose practice must be more than
suspected by his friends and associates. He and his friends would be
much astonished if he were accosted as a thief, and still I cannot see
how he could reasonably repudiate this title. Short of this extreme
case, which, however, is by no means uncommon, there are many degrees of
what may be called criminal negligence or imprudence in contracting
debts, as where a man runs up a large bill with only a slender
probability of meeting it, or a larger bill than he can probably meet in
full, or one of which he must defer the payment beyond a reasonable
time.
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