"May I ask," said the worthy Alderman DAVIES, and he might
have added, "I ask because '_DAVIES sum, non OEdipus_'"--but
he didn't, and it was a chance lost, "what salary you [the witness
under examination] received for this conduct of yours while secretary?"
To which witness answered, "£500 a year, and a bonus of £200."
Whereupon the Alderman remarked, "Then all I can say is, you could have
got many honest men to do the work for much less."
Quite so, Mr. Alderman, true for you; but if a man will act honestly
for a sovereign, what might not the addition of ten shillings do?
It ought to make him more honest comparatively, while another ten
shillings would make him superlatively honest. But how if there were an
obligation attached to the increase? Just a trifling deviation out of
the straight course to begin with, to oblige a patron?
Let honesty be the drug in the market, and the rare herb dishonesty
will be at a premium. It is gratifying to be assured, on aldermanic
authority, that SHAKSPEARE was wrong, and that in future for
_Hamlet's_ well-known dictum, "For to be honest as this world goes is
to be as one man picked out of ten thousand," we must read "For to be
dishonest as this world goes is to be as one man picked out of ten
thousand."
Happy Alderman DAVIES! In what paradisiacal pastures must he
have moved and breathed and earned his livelihood!
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