Honesty Is the Best Policy 2

Honesty is the Best Policy

It is possible that dishonesty may be successful for a time, but honesty is sure to succeed better in the long run. This may be seen by considering the career of students in schools and col­leges, and of men engaged in the business of life.

The student who cheats in an examination may, if he escapes detection, gain a few marks more than he would otherwise have got. But what is the probable result? He learns thereby to trust to dishonest means of passing his future examinations, and neglects honest work, the only sure means of success.

The consequence is that, when the next examination comes, he finds that he is so far below the standard required, that even by cheating he is quite unable to pass.

Thus, even if his dishonesty remains undetected, he is likely to be outstripped by his more honest rival, and in addition he exposes himself to the risk of an ignominious convic tion, which will ruin his reputation and cruelly wound the hearts of his parents and friends.

The effects of dishonesty are much the same in the case of clerks, merchants, government servants, and others, who, after leaving school or college, are trying to make their own way in the world.

They may suddenly make themselves rich by dishonest means. But wealth so obtained is as a rule rapidly squandered, and to regain it recourse is likely to be had again to new acts of dishonesty. Thus the dishonest man lives all through his life in continual dread that his misdeeds may at any moment be revealed in the light of day.

Success in the beginning of his career only tempts him to more reckless fraud on a larger scale, and the end is generally disgrace and punishment.

The longer detection is delayed, the worse it is for the culprit. A school-boy detected in cheating receives some boyish punish­ment, which may have the good effect of curing him of his evil propensities and preventing him from growing up into a dishonest man.

But the detection of dishonesty...