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IIUMBUG.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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over again , but uniformly without success . How long is this reproach to stand ? How * iorig are we to continue to hear of authors dying in poverty and want , leaving their families to the mercy of the wide world ? Is it professional jealousy which stands in the way of their combination for the purposes of mutual relief ; or is it that they shrink'from the indignity of sending' round the hat ? It the latter , we would put it to them , whether it is not better to send round the hut in good time , before the day . of prosperity is past , than to wait until the appeal must necessarily be made in the tones of a whining and importunate beggar ? And we would ask one other question : When is the foundation-stone of the Literary College to be laid ?
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been much better for him to have been a squatter or a backwoodsman all his life , than to have-realized a fortune by these ignominious ways . A lie does an immense deal of harm in every way , and no one but a fool can expect to gain by it in the long run ; but yet trade Ls ,. and has been for a long time , founded upon a system of small lies . Our satirist Pope , in parcelling out the sons of a gentleman in the world , says— ¦ . . " Ready and rough , the first one struts a squire ; The next a tradesman , meek , and much a liar . " And there is every reason to believe the picture too true . Further back , in Eliza-BETIi ' s time , we find all the poets and wits at war with the citizens , talking and writing ¦ perpetually against their cheating and cozeningand exposing their shortweights and other
, rogueries whenever they could ; but further back still , in Queen Cleopatra ' s time , and even , in the good old days of the Pharaohs and the shepherd kings , there were cheats . Some of the gold necklaces and earrings in the tombs of the Mummies have been discovered with the filling- of copper exuding through the thin covering of gold , and a learned Irish bishop the other day told us that the ancient ring money of the Irish was often found of only a small coatimr of gold filled up with lead . These ancient lies cannot stand against the tooth of Time . The consequence of this has been , that traders and men of commerce , instead of being regarded as the pioneers of civilization and as honourable men , have been looked upon with universal suspicion . The shopkeeper and shopman are terms of contempt . A tradesman who gives his whole time to the
arrangement and distribution of things of general utility , should be regarded as a very valuable member of society , but lie is not , and such is too often the sad stigma attaching to his position that no sooner is he in it than lift wants to leave it . He is ready to make a fortune as quickly as he can ; his children may be sent to fine schools , but the children of persons of society will not associate with them ; he is tabooed by those above him , and when he ' makes a fortune the people around his country house look down upoiljiim . He may be a very good and excellent man , but he is the victinr of the general dishonesty of his class . Even the very nation to which he belongs feels the stigma ; and although we boast of having the most honest trading community in the world , all England felt affronted when Nafoleon , who was after all a very great rogue
himself , called us a nation of shopkeepers . jt Was certainly time to be ashamed of the class when we found that wooden nutmegs were sold for real ones , " chicory was substituted for coffee , red lead and ground glass [ or cayenne , and sloe leaves or worse for tea . But instead or remedying the wrong by cea . sing _ to do evil and learning to do right' we had recourse to humbug . Every article was labelled genuine ; every publicuouse was noted ; every bottle of port was fine old crusted port ; and testimonials , either forged or Obtained from good-natured and silly people , were paraded by thousands . Luckily one kind , of humbug ' kills another , and the generality of the shams are so great that people hiivo ceased to believe in them . The cheapest and best tea , or tobacco , or coffee , or linen drapery in the neighbourhood' ' or . the worid , as the proprietors according to taste may advertise , are now regarded ,
g-ene-IT is Mr . Hosea Bigxow who , after giving the various headings of the Creed of that Athanasius of the Press , a pious Hedditur , sums up the whole in the following quatrain , not now so often quoted as it will be : — " In short , I firmly du believe In Humbug generally ,. For it ' s a thing , 1 du perceive , To hev a solid valley . " "This , "he continues , — "this hath my faithful shepherd been , " and he ¦ uro-es also that he has been pretty well fed by that shepherd . But we must remember that the '" pious Hedditnr" was a humbug- himself , and we cannot wonder at his creed . He may well talk about believes is
the value of deceit who lives by it ; but he who so a rogue ; and a rogue , says Coleridge , is after all but a " fool in circumbendibus , " a roundabout idiot , in good truth , who after all does a great deal more harm to himself than he does to the world . Fools and rogues are very nearly allied , a great deal more nearly than they imagine , and are divided by ; a very-slight partition ; - —low cunning " and a-general disbelief in good is common to each . "lhe fool , we are told , " hath said in his heart , There is no God ; 'the rogue whispers in his there is no honesty ; from this difference springs their diHerent actions . Of old , people believed more strongly m creeds , or at least we think so ; but the rogue never did ; he has this against him , that he absolutely must mistrust himself , and only hope to succeed in his practices by = that ; blind faith which he
has in a species of Luck or Fortune . ' < J Sometimes , ' said one m prison for swindling , "it turns up trumps , and sometimes it doesn't ^ - The \* ery best lay ^ scheme ) will fail , and the very worst will bring in the ochre ( money ) , there ' s . no knowing what ' s what . ' This is the sort of belief which the rogue has to support him . A good course of reading and exiimination in the prosperity of rogues would do our commercial men good . A successful rogue is a rather rare bird , and it must be confessed that when one is so , he does more harm to general honesty than any other man in the world . The truly strong and good man will know that it is not worth being a rogue for all the world ; but all of us are not true , good , and honest , and it is a sorry sight for most of us to find a swindler exalted into high society , a sharper in the councils of governors ,
and a rogue seated in the place of honest men . If most of us , however , eschew downright roguery , there are un-^™ f . ™ , »* . » l . y-t »»>^ v » m . ^^^ in " Humbug . " Now ' ; Humbug " is a curious word . We do not exactly know its definition . The learned gentlemen who give all kinds of answers in Notes and Queries tell us that it came from a swindler of the name of Hombukg ; others say that in the late wars—the late wars are those of Queen Anne ' s time—the Hamburgers , being merchants and men in trade , published false reports , which were said to be from Hamburg ; hence the word Humbug , meaning what the French call a canard , & goose , because he who believes it is a goose . In the Crimean campaign the young officer !? , called these stories " a shave , " for what reason we know not ; in war , when hopes and fears rise up every day , and are allayed as quickly , these stories are
prevalent enough . They are the rmnours of war , which are wicKed and accursed because untrue , and the devil is the father of them as of all other lies . But " Humbug" is not quite so black in its parentage , and arises naturally out of the heart of man . The origin of the term is forgotten , but the word is ti portion of our tongue now , and recognised even in the highest society , although Johnson , old Bailey , and Walker do not g-ivq it . But wo all know what it means . Clergymen , soldiers , tradesmen , politicians , House of Commons men , and prime ministers , all understand it . They find out what it means abroad as well as at home too . In Paris , Rome , Madrid , St . Petersburg-, the word may not be a household one , but the spirit which it enwraps is . In a mild sense there is a considerable deal of humbug in every
kind of transaction—there is in every trado , in every newspaper , in every ship . Sam Slick used to drive his groat trade in clockmaking through ono species of humbug , which i » flattery . Of fifteen thousand clocks , he said , sold by himself and partners in ono province , twelve thousand were sold by a knowledge of soft , sawder and human ndtur : The process ho explains thus : —He n « veraskod people to buy his clocks , but pretended that they were for some neighbour , and merely set them going , and loft them in their houses for his own , accommodation . When he called « for them he found that people were not inclined to part with them , and did not know the force of a habit when once indulged in , or tlio fondness which ¦ we contract for ft superfluity which once we did not care for . Wo may deal with ft character in fiction perhaps more boldly and safely than with one who is alive and before our eyes . We shall not , hurt our neig-hbour ' n feelings if we declare that Mr . Suck told a great lie . and sold his clock / by menns of lying , and that it would have
rally , as the worst , and a little reflection on the part of the public would soon put an end to the deceit altogether , but luckily for the "humbug" dealers more than half the people do not reflect—and " by"thltt ~ pm ^ itrfri ; iTey"iivD-rnay ~ b u tK-hat-the- « ther-pontiou-ii ^ atuiu ally getting stronger and wiser they would flourish much more than they do ; yet the old proverbs are true enough , '' ill-gotten gain never prospers , " "that which is got over the devil ' s back is sure to be spent under his belly , " " a lie stands oh one leg , a truth-upon four , ' * and so on . Few are inclined to pardon one who his once deceived or cajoled them , ami he who has deceived his customer in one thing never knows nor cau know all the harm he has done himself . Continued puffing and activity , and loud cry ings out , may make a rogue successful and notorious , but after all his success is of a very evanescent kind , and his notoriety only exposes him when he is ouce
known . What is true of the tradesman is true of the lawyer , or the politician , or of any class in life . It is not in nature to love a rogue ; we may laugh at his cleverness once or twice , but we are not at all amused ub his cajolery if we are once cajoled by him . Wo English do not like loud " promisers ; we do not love politicians who are like teetotums , and have a figure on every side . The . turncoat who " humbugs" us onoe we never forgive , and seldom trust again . We say he is too clever for us ; wo shun him , and are quite right in doing so . He may rise in life , but his sin will iind him out . But beyond and above the political , there is yet another class of humbug still existing , but not quite so powerful as it used to be , which is called a pious fraud . It arises generally from the fact of people believing that they can help God with a lie , and may do just .
a little evil * of course only a very little , that good nuiy come of it Thus , if a church was to be built , or a monastery founded , some saint appeared in a dream , and commanded it to bo done , or a miracle took place du the spot , or a relic was turned up and cured , people , . The . pious were to bo gently coerced into doinggood , and tho fraud took place ; or it may bo that the rich man was to be quietly persuaded to give up a small portion of liis goods . TJjo history of pious frauds would niako perhaps a book ns entertaining as any tluit ever was written ; but sooner or later , like all untruths , £ hoy have exploded . Good but weak men might first have indulged in them , men whoso faith wad not strong enough to endure all things , and who looked for some comfort hure below ; but their followers wore neither tfo good nor so > faithful ns they , ami their grossnesa spoilt all , and when tho hum * bug was found out the originators suffered just as much as the courser
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* . - . -. ' . ? ¦ * ¦ 542 The Leader and Saturday Analyst . [ , June p , I 860 .
Iiumbug.
HUMBUG .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 9, 1860, page 542, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2351/page/10/
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