But when a whole people, united by a common disregard of justice, conspire to defraud public creditors, and States vie with States in an infamous repudiation of just debts, by open or sinister methods; and nations exert their sovereignty to protect and dignify the knavery of the commonwealth, then the confusion of domestic affairs has bred a fiend before whose flight honor fades away, and under whose feet the sanctity of truth and the religion of solemn compacts are stamped down and ground into the dirt. Need we ask the cause of growing dishonesty among the young, the increasing untrustworthiness of all agents, when States are seen clothed with the panoply of dishonesty, and nations put on fraud for their garments?

Absconding agents, swindling schemes, and defalcations, occurring in such melancholy abundance, have at length ceased to be wonders, and rank with the common accidents of fire and flood. The budget of each week is incomplete without its mob and run-away cashier-its duel and defaulter, and as waves which roll to the shore are lost in those which follow on, so the villainies of each week obliterate the record of the last.

Men of notorious immorality, whose dishonesty is flagrant, whose private habits would disgrace the ditch, are powerful and popular. I have seen a man stained with every sin, except those which required courage; into whose head I do not think a pure thought has entered for forty years; in whose heart an honorable feeling would droop for very loneliness; in evil, he was ripe and rotten; hoary and depraved in deed, in word, in his present life and in all his past; evil when by himself, and viler among men; corrupting to the young; to domestic fidelity, recreant; to common honor, à traitor;

to honesty, an outlaw; to religion, a hypocrite-base in all that is worthy of man and accomplished in whatever is disgraceful, and yet this wretch could go where he would-enter good men's dwellings and purloin their votes. Men would curse him, yet obey him; hate him, and assist him; warn their sons against him, and lead them to the polls for him. A public sentiment which produces ignominious knaves cannot breed honest men.

We have not yet emerged from a period in which debts were insecure; the debtor legally protected against the rights of the creditor; taxes laid, not by the requirements of justice, but for political effect, and lowered to a dishonest inefficiency, and when thus diminished, not collected; the citizens resisting their own officers; officers resigning at the bidding of the electors; the laws of property paralyzed; bankrupt laws built up, and stay-laws unconstitutionally enacted, upon which the courts look with aversion, yet fear to deny them lest the wildness of popular opinion should roll back disdainfully upon the bench to despoil its dignity and prostrate its power. General suffering has made us tolerant of general dishonesty, and the gloom of our commercial disaster threatens to become the pall of our morals. HENRY WARD BEECHER.

KENTUCKY PHILOSOPHY.

You Wi'yam, come 'ere, sah, dis instance. Wut dat

you got under dat box?

I don't want no foolin'-you hear me? Wut you say? Aint nu'h'n' but rocks?

'Pears ter me you's owdashus p'ticler-S'posin' dey's uv a new kine.

I'll des take a look at dem rocks. Hi, yi! der you think dat I's bline?

I calls dat a plain watermillion, you scamp, en I knows whah it grewed;

It come fum de Jimmerson cawn fiel', dah on ter side er de road.

You stole it, you rascal-you stole it! I watched you fum down in de lot.

En time I gits th'ough wid you, nigger, you won't eb'n be a grease spot!

I'll fix you. Mirandy! Mirandy! go cut me a hick'ry— make 'ase!

En cut me de toughes' en keenes' you c'n fine, any whar on de place.

I'll larn you, Mr. Wi'yam Joe Vetters, ter steal, en ter lie, you young sinner.

Disgracin' yo' ole Christian mammy, en makin' her leave cookin' dinner.

Now, aint you ashamed er yo'se'f, sur? I is. I's 'shamed you's my son!

En de holy accorjan angel, he's 'shamed er wut you has

done;

En he's tuk it down up yander in coal-black, blood-red letters

"One watermillion stolen by Wi'yam Josephus Vetters."

En what you s'posen Br'er Bascom, yo' teacher at Sunday-school,

'Ud say ef he knowed how you's broke de good Lord's Gol'n Rule?

Boy, whah's de raisin' I give you? Is you boun' fuh ter be a black villion?

I's s'prised dat a chile er you mammy 'ud steal any man's watermillion.

En I's now gwiner cut it right open, 'n you shan't have nary bite,

Fuh a boy who'll steal watermillions-en dat in de day's broad light

Ain't-Lawdy! it's green! Mirandy! Mi-rand-y! come on wi' dat switch!

Well, stealin' a g-r-e-e-n watermillion! Who ever yeered tell er sich?

Can't tell when dey's ripe? W'y you thump um, en w'en dey go pank dey is green;

But when dey go punk, now you mine me, dey's ripeen dat's des w'at I mean.

En nex' time you hook watermillions-you heered me, you ign'ant, you hunk,

Ef you do' want a lickin' all over, be sho dat dey allers

go "punk!"

HARRISON ROBERTSON.