It was a pleasant thing to see the Governor of Pennsylvania taking the lead in the Methodist General Conference when the resolutions against polygamy came up for discussion. Governor Pattison was a lay member of the body, and made a vigorous speech in favor of energetic measures to suppress this evil.
A distinguished Israelite of New York said to a reporter last month that he expected to see the synagogues opened for religious services on Sunday. The movement would begin with the religious use of both sacred days; but it will probably end in the general neglect of the seventh day. The inconvenience of having a different Sabbath from the rest of the people is doubtless a great embarrassment to the religious teachers of the Hebrews.
It is a proper prayer, “Remember not against me the sins of my youth.” But it is as well for young people to remember that human society does not readily forget our errors. And somebody has said that “God can afford to forgive when men can not afford to forget.” Perhaps he is not quite right; to forgive is not to give a man an office or a farm. We have forgiven all who have wronged us, if we are good Christians, but that does not oblige us to indorse their notes.
An ungracious thing is the fault-finding with Mr. George I. Seney, because, before the late troubles in Wall Street, he gave away some two millions of money to philanthropic uses. People who never give away things seem to think that, having given largely, Mr. Seney should have rolled himself into a safe nest and remained there. It occurs to us that no man has a better right to risk his own money than the man who has acquitted himself generously of his obligations to humanity. We have seen no proof that Mr. Seney was guilty of even an irregularity in the conduct of his business, or that he is not able to meet all his engagements.
Mr. Ferdinand Ward is the most picturesque and romantic figure in the late crisis in monetary New York. His success in Wall Street, by which a poor youth laid his hands on a dozen or more millions of other men’s money, appropriately climaxed by his enforced visit to the cell formerly tenanted by William M. Tweed, is a romance of rascality; and yet no one can tell just how he succeeded in using the cupidity of mankind to blind their eyes to the plainest principles of finance. The scheme was simple enough: Loan $70,000 on securities worth $100,000. Then take the securities to a bank and hypothecate them for $90,000. To a thief the profit is just $20,000. But the genius lies in concealing the simplicity of the business.