That a refined man is better than a coarse one, I admit. He is pleasanter, and not only so, but safer. We know his virtue to be secure from a thousand temptations before which meaner natures fall; and to a large extent, therefore, we feel him to be worthy of our trust. He will not betray us for a pound, or a dinner, or a place, or a coaxing word, or a condescending bow: but we must not go too far with him for all that. He has his price as surely as the meanest of his fellows; and let him only come in the way of a temptation he values as highly as the other values his miserable pound, and down he goes! Refined natures, therefore, are only comparatively trustworthy; and, however estimable or admirable they may be under other circumstances, when they do fail they are as guilty as the rest. It is a bad thing altogether, bribery and corruption is; and I don't object to your putting it down when it takes that material form of money you can so readily get hold of. But what I hate is the cant that is canted about it by those who have not even the virtue to take their equivalent on the sly. For it is a remarkable thing, that when this does not come in a material shape, such as you can count or handle, it is looked upon by the bribee as no bribe at all! Nay, in some cases he will glory in his crime, as if it were a virtue; and in all cases he will turn round upon his fellow-criminal--him of the vulgar sort--call him a worm, and throw that mess of pottage at him! This refined evil-doer may be as energetic as he pleases in his actions, but it would be well if he were a little more quiet in his words. If he looks within, he will find that the distinction on which he prides himself is wholly superficial; and that such language is very unbecoming the lips of one who might more truly, as well as more politely, say to corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister.
The main cause of such anomalies I take to be, that there is among us a general want of earnestness. We do not believe in ourselves, or our duties, or our destinies. Our life has no theory, and we care only for outward forms and symbols. Our taste is shocked by the grossness of vice, but we have no quarrel with the thing itself; and if the people around us will only preserve a polished, or at least inoffensive exterior, that is all we demand. Why should we look below the surface in their case, when we do no such thing in our own? We feel amiable, genteel, and refined; we detest the appearance of low impropriety, and would take a good deal of trouble to put it down; we look very kindly on the world in general, if the low people who are in it would only become as decorous as ourselves. In the old republics, the case was different. There men had a theory, even if a bad one, and they stuck to it through good report and through bad report. The theory was the spirit of the community, and its members sacrificed to it their whole individuality. No wonder that such little political unities held together as if their component parts had been welded, and that they continued to do so till they came into collision, and, from their hardness and toughness, rubbed one another out.