NEBULÆ.
—It would seem that we must return to the old fashion of strong boxes, old stockings, and cracked pipkins as the receptacles of our savings. As to savings banks and trust companies, and life insurance companies, the revelations of the last few months go to show that they do anything but save; that they are no longer to be trusted, and that they ensure nothing but total loss to those who put their money into them. Ere long it will be said of a young man that he was poor but honest, although he had the misfortune to have a father who was a director in several important financial institutions. The state of affairs in this respect is frightful; and it frightens. The financial panic has been followed by a moral panic which is really as much more deplorable than its predecessor as moral causes are more radical in their operation and more enduring than those which are merely material. Confidence is gone. How it is to be restored is a problem far more perplexing than how to revive drooping trade. For that the real wealth of the country, never greater than it is now and constantly increasing, must bring about sooner or later. But if men of wealth and of fair reputation are no longer to be trusted, what is the use of saving, to put money into a box where it gains nothing and where thieves break through and steal? Robbery seems to be the fashion; on the one hand masked burglars with pistols at your heads and gags in the mouths of your wife and children, and on the other hypocritical, lying, false-swearing, thieving scoundrels who get your money under fair pretences, and because of your trust in their characters and good faith, and then waste it in speculations and in luxurious living. Of the two, the burglars seem to be rather the more respectable. It is said, on good authority, that the West India slaves of a past generation could be trusted to carry bags of gold from one part of the Spanish Main to another, and that they were constantly so trusted with entire impunity. They would kidnap, and on occasion stab or cut a throat; but if they were trusted, they would not break their faith. The honesty of the Turkish porters is so well known that it has become almost proverbial. Does not the honesty of these pirates and pagans put to shame the Christians who with the professions and the faces of Pharisees "devour widows' houses"?
—For as to the business of life insurance, savings banks, and trust companies, it is somewhat more, or surely somewhat other, than mere business. And so those who practise it and profit by it profess that it is. A life insurance company is a grand combination philanthropico-financial corporation whose motto is, "Cast thy bread upon the waters, and after many days thou shalt receive it again." But the truth of the matter turns out to be that if you cast your bread upon the waters, the chances are that you will see it devoured before your eyes by financial sharks. One case in point has come directly to our knowledge. A gentleman, a Government officer, who has a moderate salary, with little or no hope of acquiring property, insured his life twenty years or more ago in what was thought a good company. His premium was always promptly paid even in the flush times of the war and afterward, when the fixed salaries of public officers lost more than half their purchasing power. Within the last few months he has suddenly found that his policy is not worth the paper on which it is magnificently printed. But worse than this: within the last few years, as age has crept upon him, there has come with it a disease which is incurable although he may live for some time longer. Now, however, he cannot get his life insured at all; no company will take his life; (it is a rueful jest to say that the company in question did take his life); and he has the prospect before him of a widow left entirely without provision, although for nearly a quarter of a century he and she stinted themselves to provide against such a contingency. Meantime the officers of the company lived luxuriously, and used the money in their hands for speculation, and in living which if not riotous, was at least shameless and dishonest. And they were all men of reputation, were selected for their positions because it was thought that men of their position and habits of life and outward bearing were incorruptible. Have they not devoured that prospective widow's house? If He who condemned the hypocritical Pharisees of old were on the earth now, would he not pronounce Woe upon them? And much would they care about His condemnation if they could get their commissions, and their pickings and stealings, and live in splendid houses, and be known as the managers of an institution that handled millions of dollars yearly, and whose offices were gorgeous with many-colored marbles, and gilding, and inlaid wood, and rich carpets!
And like their predecessors in the devouring of widows' houses for a pretence, they make long prayers. They, we say; but of course we do not mean all; for there are honest officers of life insurance companies, and even sound companies; but the number of both is shown day after day to be less and less; and when we think that those that we hear about are only they which have reached the end of their tether in fraud, perjury, and swindling, the prospect before us is one of the most disheartening that could be presented to a reflecting people. For remember, these defaulting, false-swearing life insurance and savings bank officers are picked men, and that their dishonest practices are from their very nature deliberate, slow of execution, and that in fact they have gone on for years. It is no clutch of drowning men at financial straws that we have here; it is the regular "confidence game" played on an enormous scale by men who are regarded as the most respectable that can be found in the whole community. They are vestrymen, and deacons, and elders, and grave and reverend signors, and these men have deliberately used and abused the confidence not only of the community in general, but of their friends and acquaintance, to "convey" in Nym's phrase, to steal in plain English, money which was brought within their reach because of their pretended high principle and their philanthropic motives. For, we repeat, it must constantly be kept in mind as an aggravation of these wrongs, that life insurance companies and savings banks are essentially and professedly benevolent institutions. They are, and they openly profess to be, chiefly for the benefit of widows and children. The man who takes to himself the money of a life insurance company or of a savings bank is not a mere thief and swindler; he robs the widow and the fatherless; he takes his place among those who are accursed of all men; and moreover, in all these cases he is a hypocrite of the deepest dye.
—In any case, however, there is reason for fearing that the business of life insurance has in the main long been rotten, even when it has not been deliberately corrupt. Professedly and originally a benevolent contrivance by which men of moderate incomes could year by year make provision for wives and children who might otherwise be left destitute, it was reasonable and right to expect that the business of life insurance would be conducted upon the most economical principles and in the simplest and most unpretending fashion; that there would have been only as much expenditure as was absolutely necessary for the proper conduct of the business; and that safety for the insured would have been the first if not the only ruling motive with the insurers. And such indeed was life insurance in the beginning. But by and by it was found that there was "money in it," and the sleek, snug hypocrites that prey upon society under the guise of philanthropy and religion began to swarm around it. Life insurance companies began to have a host of officers; they had "actuaries," whatever they may be, who, by whatever motives they were actuated, contrived and put forth statements which to the common mind were equally plausible and bewildering; they entered into bitter rivalry with each other in their philanthropic careers; they had agents who went abroad over the land in swarms, smooth-speaking, shameless creatures who would say anything, promise anything so long as they got their commissions; they published gorgeous pamphlets, tumid and splendid with self-praise, and filled with tabular statements that justified and illustrated the denying that there is nothing so untrustworthy as facts, except figures; they contrived the "mutual" plan, by which they made it appear to some men that they could insure their own lives—which is much like a man's trying to hoist himself over a fence by the straps of his boots—and yet these mutual officers, benevolent creatures, were as eager to get business and as ready to pay large commissions as if, poor, simple-minded souls, they had expected to get rich by life insuring; and then they put up huge and enormously expensive buildings, more like palaces than any others known to our country. And all this came out of the pockets of those who are, with cruel mockery, called the insured. It is the old story: ten cents to the beneficiary and ninety cents to the agent through whose hands the money passes. Is it not plain, merely from the grand scale and the large pretence on which this life insurance business has been carried on of late years, that it is rotten? It is a scheme for making money. Now, making money is right enough; but when it is carried on under philanthropic and benevolent pretences its tendency must naturally be, as we have seen that it has been, to gross corruption and the most heartless fraud.
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The point of honor has been deemed of use To teach good manners and to curb abuse.
So wrote Cowper in his "Conversation," nearly a century ago, when duelling was beginning to go out of fashion, even among men who did not look upon it from a religious point of view. There is no doubt that the passage which these lines introduce did much to bring the custom of settling personal quarrels by single combat into disrepute. Cowper, the moral poet par excellence of the English language, attained this eminence chiefly because he wrote, not like a fanatic, or a canting pietist, but like a Christian gentleman and a man of sense. A man of family, he thought and felt as a gentleman, and addressed himself to gentlemen; and indeed, in his day poetry, at least of the quality that he produced, had very few readers outside the pale of gentry. His view of duelling is the one which now prevails in most communities of English blood in all parts of the world. Germans and Frenchmen and the Latin races generally still fight upon personal provocation, and in our late slave States and among the rude and fierce men who guard and extend our western borders, "misunderstandings" are settled by the bullet or the knife, and if not on the spot, with the weapon at hand, then in a regularly arranged duel in which the forms are entirely subordinate to the essentials of a bloody and vindictive contest. With these exceptions, however, duelling among the English-speaking people has come to be regarded as both folly and crime. Nothing could evince more strongly the change that has taken place in the moral sense of the world; for to resent an insult by a challenge to fight, and to accept such a challenge without a moment's hesitation, were once the highest duties of a gentleman. There was a reason for this; and without advocating or defending the practice of duelling, it may be questioned whether that reason has entirely disappeared.
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—Our readers need not fear that we are about to defend or to palliate the conduct of either of the parties to the recent affair which began in Fifth Avenue in New York and ended on the Maryland border; but the fact that that occurrence or series of occurrences has attracted the attention of the whole country, makes it a proper occasion of remark upon the questions involved in such encounters. And first we must set aside the Cowper view of the subject, not in its conclusion, but in its reasoning. For however Christian in sentiment and sound in its final judgment the passage in the "Conversation" may be, its author's position is not logically impregnable. For it rests upon the assumption embodied in the couplet—
Amoral, sensible, and well-bred man Will not affront me, and no other can.
But if this be true, it follows that a man cannot be insulted, which is an absurdity; for men are insulted, as we all know—and we are happy if we do not know it by experience. Moreover, men are insulted more frequently where the "code of honor" does not prevail than where it does; for that code is of use; and if it does not teach good manners, it certainly does curb abuse. The question to be decided is whether in the teaching of manners and the curbing of abuse by the alternative and arbitrament of bloody combat we are not paying too high a price for what we gain. To consider the example which is the occasion of our remark. A man is met in the street by another with whom he has been upon terms of social intercourse, and is there publicly whipped. He faces his assailant, resists, but is overcome because the assailant is the stronger and the more dexterous. What shall he do? Submit quietly? That may be Christian conduct; but whether it is good public policy, to say nothing more, may at least be questioned; for it would place the greater part of the community at the mercy of the strong brawling bullies. Two courses are open to a person so assailed—either to place the matter in the hands of the law, in a civil or a criminal suit, or to challenge the assailant. In most cases it may be admitted that the former course is the wiser and the better course. Where mere protection against personal injury is sought a police justice and a police officer are the effective as well as the lawful means. But there is something else to be considered. The mere personal injury may be slight, and there may be no fear of its repetition, and yet there is a wrong done that may rankle deeper than a wound. Personal indignity is something that most men of character and spirit feel more than bodily pain or than loss of money or of property. It is a sentimental grievance, and therefore one which the law cannot provide against or punish. It cannot be estimated in damages; none the less, therefore, but rather the more, does the man who suffers it take it to heart; none the less, therefore, but rather the more, do gentlemen set up barriers against it which, although invisible, and not even expressed, if indeed they are expressible in words, are more forbidding in their frown, more difficult of assault than the regular bulwarks of the law. It must be repeated that this wrong is not to be measured by the bodily injury or the bodily pain that is inflicted. Two men may be boxing or fencing, and one may severely injure the other; but no sense of wrong accompanies the injury, and that not because no injury was intended, but because no offence was meant; whereas the flirt of a kid glove across the face, or a word, may inflict a wrong that if not atoned for or expiated, may rankle through a man's whole life. To attempt to set aside or to do away with this feeling is quite useless: as well attempt to set aside or to do away with human nature. It is this feeling that has been at the bottom of most duels since duels passed out of use as a mode of determining guilt or innocence, or of deciding questions as to property, or position, or title. In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries duels were chiefly the remedy for wounded honor, as they are when they are rarely fought nowadays. True there was the duel fought between two gentlemen "to prevent the inconvenience of their both addressing the same lady"; but the duel for that reason pure and simple was always comparatively rare, as, owing to the infirmity of human nature, the agreement in opinion of the lady and the disagreement as to the disposition to be made of her were almost sure to take the form of a more reasonable if not more deadly cause of quarrel.
—But society—that is, society in which Anglo-Saxon modes of thought and feeling prevail—says that no matter what the provocation, or how great the sense of wrong, the duel shall not be; it has been made a crime in some if not in most of such communities even to send a challenge. This is done on grounds of public policy and of morality, and not, as some persons seem to think, because killing in a duel is murder. Murder is more than a mere killing, and is in its essence entirely inconsistent with the fact that the person killed voluntarily placed himself, and generally with much trouble and at great inconvenience, in the way of his death. The duel is in fact a sort of hari-kari, or happy release, as our Japanese friends have well phrased it, but it is with the coöperation of a second party who voluntarily places himself in similar peril, the happy release being in both cases from the stigma of dishonor. This is shown very clearly by the distinction which is drawn in general estimation between the man who challenges because he has suffered an insult or an injury to his family honor, and one who does so from a feeling of revenge and with the intent to rid himself of a hated opponent, as for example in the case of Aaron Burr in his duel with Alexander Hamilton. That was more than half a century ago, when there were no such laws against duelling as now exist; but Burr, although he rid himself of his hated rival on what was called the field of honor, was from that day a degraded, detested, ruined man. If Hamilton had offered him a personal indignity, or had injured him in his family relations, the result of the duel would have added nothing to the weight of disrepute under which Burr was already suffering. The whole world recognizes this distinction, and there is hardly a man whose breeding and habits make him what is rightly called a gentleman in the full sense of the term, who, however his judgment may condemn the duellist who fights because of an insult or an injury to family honor, does not feel a certain sympathy with him. Notwithstanding the teachings of Christianity, and the example of its founder as to the patient suffering of indignity, notwithstanding the law, we all, or most of us, have the feeling that Barclay of Wry's battle-tried comrade had when he saw his old friend and heroic commander openly insulted by a throng of swashbucklers in the streets of Aberdeen, because he had become a Quaker, and which Whittier has expressed with such spirit in his poem on the subject, which is one of the few truly admirable ballads of modern days (although its author does not so class it), and which is, we are inclined to think, the most admirable of them all:
Woe's the day, he sadly said, With a slowly shaking head, And a look of pity: Wry's honest lord reviled, Mock of knave and sport of child, In his own good city.
Speak the word, and master mine, As we charged on Tilly's line And his Walloon lancers, Smiting through their midst, we'll teach Civil look and decent speech To these boyish prancers.
—What then is to be done? for the question is a serious one. We all feel that personal indignity is of all wrongs the hardest one to bear; we know that it is a wrong of a kind that cannot be redressed by law; and yet we restrain men from the only redress, "satisfaction," as it is called, that human ingenuity has bean able to devise, and with which human nature, of the unregenerate sort, is satisfied. We cannot expect all men to behave like members of the Society of Friends. All men have not proved their courage and high spirit like Barclay of Wry, who
——stood Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood With the great Gustavus.
We cannot compel all men to be Christians; and yet we would compel them by law to bear insult as if they were Christians and great captains turned Quakers. We can do this, which thus far society has neglected to do: we can put a social ban upon the man who deliberately offers a personal indignity to another. This should be a social duty. Let it be understood, according to one of those silent social laws which are the most binding of all laws because the sheriff cannot enforce them, that the man who flourishes a horsewhip over another's head, or who uses his tongue as a scourge with like purpose, or who offers personal indignity of any kind, insults society as well as his victim, and is not to be pardoned until he has made the amend to the injured party, and there would soon be an end of provocation to duelling, except that which touches the family, and that cannot be done away with until men have so developed morally and intellectually that they see that a man's honor is not in the keeping of a woman, not in that of any other person than himself, not even his wife. Her conduct may indeed involve his dishonor, if he is what used to be called a wittol, but even then his dishonor is because of his own disgrace. Only then can we reconcile the making of a challenge a felony with the feeling that a man who has had a personal indignity put upon him has suffered the deepest wrong he could be called upon to bear, yet a wrong which society fails to right while it forbids him to seek the only reparation.
—That reparation is defined, if not prescribed, by the code of honor, as to which code there seems to be a very general misapprehension. The purpose of the code is this, that no gentleman shall offer a personal indignity to another except with the certainty of its being at the risk of his life. If society would provide a remedy or preventive that would operate like this risk, the code would soon pass absolutely out of practice and into oblivion. It is generally supposed that the code is a very bloodthirsty law, and that those who acknowledge it and act upon it are "sudden and quick in quarrel," lovers of fighting, revengeful and implacable, and that the code gives them the means of gratifying their murderous or combative propensities. No notion of it could be more erroneous; the misconception is like that which supposes military men to be desirous of using arms on slight provocation; whereas the contrary is the case. No men are so reluctant to begin fighting as thoroughbred soldiers; for they know what it means and to what end it must be carried if it is once begun. The code has been reduced to writing, and by a "fire-eating" South Carolinian, so that we can see just how bloodthirsty it is. It provides first that if an insult be received in public it should not be resented or noticed there, out of respect to those present, except in case of a blow or the like, because this is insult to the company which did not originate with the person receiving it; that a challenge should never be sent in the first instance because "that precludes all negotiation," and that in the note asking explanation and reparation the writer should "cautiously avoid attributing to the adverse party any improper motive"; that the aggrieved party's second should manage the whole affair even before a challenge is sent, because he "is supposed to be cool and collected, and his friends' feelings are more or less irritated" ["more or less" here is excellent good as expressive of the state of mind of a man so aggrieved that he is ready to risk his life]; the second is to "use every effort to soothe and tranquillize his principal," not to "see things in the aggravated light in which he views them, but to extenuate the conduct of his adversary whenever he sees clearly an opportunity to do so"; to "endeavor to persuade him that there has been some misunderstanding in the matter," and to "check him if he uses opprobrious epithets toward his adversary"; "when an accommodation is tendered," the code says in a paragraph worthy of the most respectful consideration, "never require too much; and if the party offering the amende honorable wishes to give a reason for his conduct in the matter, do not, unless it is offensive to your friend, refuse to receive it. By doing so you heal the breach more effectively." Strangers may call upon you for your offices as second, "for strangers are entitled to redress for wrongs as well as others, and the rules of honor and of hospitality should protect them." The second of the party challenged is also told, "Use your utmost efforts to allay the excitement which your principal may labor under," to search diligently into the origin of the misunderstanding, "for gentlemen seldom insult each other unless they labor under some misapprehension or mistake," and if the matter be investigated in the right spirit, it is probable that "harmony will be restored." The other parts of the code refer to the arrangements for and the etiquette of the hostile meeting, of which we shall only notice the censure passed upon the seconds if after either party is hit the fight is allowed to go on. The last section implies, although it does not positively assert, that "every insult may be compromised" without a hostile meeting, and it is directly said that "the old opinion that a blow must require blood is of no force; blows may be compromised in many cases." We do by no means advocate the fighting of duels; but we must say that we cannot see in this code the blood-thirstiness and the quarrel-seeking generally attributed to it. On the contrary, all its instructions seem to tend toward peacemaking, the restoration of harmony, the restraining of even expressions of ill feeling. It does recognize as indisputable that an insult must be atoned for, and if necessary, at the risk of life. That necessity society can do away with by placing its ban upon the man who insults another.
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—It is generally supposed that the "average American" beats the world in his love of big titles, and in his use of them; but the freed southern negro beats his white fellow citizen all hollow. We hear from Texas of one who is Head Centre of a Lodge—exactly of what sort we don't know, but we suppose that it must be a lodge in the wilderness or perhaps, in Solomon's phrase, a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. This cullud pusson will spend two months' wages to "report" at a grand junction "jamboree" of his "lodge." The titles of the officers of these associations are something wonderful. A negro office boy down there asked leave of absence for a day to attend a meeting. "Why," said his master, "Scip, I didn't know you belonged to a lodge." "Oh, yes, boss," replied Africanus, "Ise Supreme Grand King, an' Ise nowhar near de top nuther." Who shall say that the abolition of slavery was not worth all that it cost?