for itself a wide credit.  One is driven, however, to doubt whether even this teaching is not too high for the frontier man.  Is it possible that a frontier man should be scrupulous and at the same time successful?  Hitherto those who have allowed scruples to stand in their way have not succeeded; and they who have succeeded and made for themselves great names, who have been the pioneers of civilization, have not allowed ideas of exact honesty to stand in their way.  From General Jason down to General Fremont there have been men of great aspirations but of slight scruples.  They have been ambitious of power and desirous of progress, but somewhat regardless how power and progress shall be attained.  Clive and Warren Hastings were great frontier men, but we cannot imagine that they had ever realized the doctrine that honesty is the best policy.  Cortez, and even Columbus, the prince of frontier men, are in the same category.  The names of such heroes is legion; but with none of them has absolute honesty been a favorite virtue.  “It behoves a frontier man to be smart, sir.”  Such, in that or other language, has been the prevailing idea.  Such is the prevailing idea.  And one feels driven to ask one’s self whether such must not be the prevailing idea with those who leave the world and its rules behind them, and go forth with the resolve that the world and its rules shall follow them.

Of filibustering, annexation, and polishing savages off the face of creation there has been a great deal, and who can deny that humanity has been the gainer?  It seems to those who look widely back over history, that all such works have been carried on in obedience to God’s laws.  When Jacob by Rebecca’s aid cheated his elder brother, he was very smart; but we cannot but suppose that a better race was by this smartness put in possession of the patriarchal scepter.  Esau was polished off, and readers of Scripture wonder why heaven, with its thunder, did not open over the heads of Rebecca and her son.  But Jacob, with all his fraud, was the chosen one.  Perhaps the day may come when scrupulous honesty may be the best policy, even on the frontier.  I can only say that hitherto that day seems to be as distant as ever.  I do not pretend to solve the problem, but simply record my opinion that under circumstances as they still exist I should not willingly select a frontier life for my children.

I have said that all great frontier men have been unscrupulous.  There is, however, an exception in history which may perhaps serve to prove the rule.  The Puritans who colonized New England were frontier men, and were, I think, in general scrupulously honest.  They had their faults.  They were stern, austere men, tyrannical at the backbone when power came in their way, as are all pioneers, hard upon vices for which they who made the laws had themselves no minds; but they were not dishonest.