If a man can invest his hundreds of thousands of dollars on the
ocean or in distant countries, where men can not understand
the documents we write, it shows that there is trust between
man and man, buyers and sellers; and if there is trust between
them it is because experience has created the probabilities
of truthfulness in the actions of men and all the concordant
circumstances. If men did not believe in the truth of men,
they never would send to China, Japan or Mexico their great
properties and interests, with no other guarantee than that
the men are trustworthy. The shipmaster must be trustworthy,
the officers of the government must be trustworthy, and that
business goes on and increases the world over is a silent
testimony that, bad as men do lie, they do not lie bad enough to
separate man from man.--HENRY WARD BEECHER.
(528)