[Footnote 1:  Lectures on Political Economy, p. 255.]

A perfect knowledge of human nature is in the prayer, “Lead us not into temptation.”  No man and no woman ever resists temptation after it has begun to be temptation.  It is in the outworks of the habits that the defence must lie.  The woman who hesitates to incur a debt which she ought not to incur, is lost.  The clerk or apprentice who gloats over his master’s gold, sooner or later appropriates it.  He does so when he has got over the habitual feeling which made any approach to it an impossibility.  Thus the habits which insinuate themselves into the thousand inconsiderable acts of life, constitute a very large part of man’s moral conduct.

This running into debt is a great cause of dishonesty.  It does not matter what the debt is, whether it be for bets unsettled, for losses by cards, for milliners’ or drapers’ bills unpaid.  Men who have been well educated, well trained, and put in the way of earning money honestly, are often run away with by extravagances, by keeping up appearances, by betting, by speculation and gambling, and by the society of the dissolute of both sexes.

The writer of this book has had considerable experience of the manner in which young men have been led from the way of well-doing into that of vice and criminality.  On one occasion his name was forged by a clerk, to enable him to obtain a sum of money to pay the debts incurred by him at a public-house.  The criminal was originally a young man of good education, of reasonable ability, well-connected, and married to a respectable young lady.  But all his relatives and friends were forgotten—­wife and child and all—­in his love for drink and card-playing.  He was condemned, and sentenced to several years’ imprisonment.

In another case the defaulter was the son of a dissenting minister.  He stole some valuable documents, which he converted into money.  He escaped, and was tracked.  He had given out that he was going to Australia, by Southampton.  The Peninsular and Oriental steamer was searched, but no person answering to his description was discovered.  Some time passed, when one of the Bank of England notes which he had carried away with him, was returned to the Bank from Dublin.  A detective was put upon his track; he was found in the lowest company, brought back to London, tried, and sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment.

In another case, the criminal occupied a high position in a railway company,—­so high that he was promoted from it to be Manager of the Royal Swedish Railway.  He was one of the too numerous persons who are engaged in keeping up appearances, irrespective of honesty, morality, or virtue.  He got deeply into debt, as most of such people do; and then he became dishonest.  He became the associate of professional thieves.  He abstracted a key from the office of which he was in charge, and handed it to a well-known thief.  This was the key of the strong box in which