man to respect that right. Reputation is a flower of the most delicate nature, and is, therefore, most easily blasted. Hence every man should deal tenderly with the reputation of every other man, and see that he do him no injustice on so vital a point. So great is the danger of doing injustice here, on account of the delicate nature of the subject, that it is generally safer, even where one's reputation is somewhat factitious and above his merits, to let time correct the wrong estimate, than to attempt to correct it ourselves. But where we know that there is an utter dereliction of principle in a man who passes in the community for a fair character, and is thereby securing their confidence and patronage, we are not at liberty to conceal our knowledge of his true character from the public. But even in such a case, we may not deal in vague suspicions, nor communicate even positive facts in malice, but only for the protection of the community.

3. Ways of doing injustice to the reputa

tion of others. Slander is the general term employed to designate an offence against the right of reputation. But this may be either a malicious and designed traducing of the character of another, or only a thoughtless and idle reporting of evil about a neighbor,—as in scandal or gossip, or even the expression of a slight suspicion, or, less than this, barely an ominous silence. In all these ways the good name of another may be injured, and by the indirect methods of suspicion and silence, quite as effectually, perhaps, as by the more direct methods. A suspicion may easily be made to indicate more than the reality, and silence, where it might naturally be supposed one would be ready to speak, in case he could say any thing favorable, is the worst kind of slander. These indirect methods, therefore, are often resorted to by those who wish to slander, but do not wish to be open to the charge of having done so. They are, however, just as much slanderers as though they had spoken right out what they meant.

CHAPTER VII.

VERACITY IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

1. The ground of the duty. - Veracity being something which is required of each man, irrespective of the claims of others, and not, like justice, something which each may claim of all others, on account of his special ownership in certain things, it presents itself as a duty, rather than as a right. duty to do only what is right. as a duty in. us, must be ground or other; and, as the rightness of it does not arise from the nature of the relations of men to any particular objects, it must arise directly from the nature of things themselves. Thus, in the most literal sense, the

But it is our Veracity, then, right on some

virtue of veracity has its ground in the na-
ture of things; for veracity is barely speak-
ing and acting out things as they are. It is
merely truth, reality, reflected in our words
and acts a strict conformity, in all that we
do and say, to things as they exist.
It may
always be said, that such a statement is true,
and such a one false, because it is accord-
ing to, or contrary to, fact, reality, nature.
When one states that to be true which he
knows to be false, the first thing which stares
him in the face is, that he has falsified fact.
The man who is attempting to pass off a lie
for the truth is confronted continually by the
reality as it is, and feels condemned in the
presence of injured nature.

2. The utility of veracity but a secondary ground of the duty, at most. But some have regarded the evils of falsehood and the benefits of truthfulness as the ground of the duty of veracity. That veracity is in the highest degree useful, and falseness in the highest degree injurious, is very true. We believe

that all right is good, and all wrong evil: this, however, is not the ground, but the effect, of their being right and wrong. Suppose injustice were not harmful in its tendency; would it not still be wrong? Would not the taking by an indolent man of what an industrious man had earned be wrong, even though no evil consequences flowed from it? Every one must be conscious that such would be the case. So veracity is right irrespective of the benefits to society which result from it. It is true that we could hardly live in the world without veracity; but this is only because that departing from veracity is departing from nature, and hence must necessarily lead to evil. As to the right of the matter, the uttering of a falsehood would be just as wrong, if there were no being in the universe to be injured by it, as it now is. Still, as the capacity of happiness in others is a reason why we should promote their happiness, as far as we can consistently with sterner duties, the benefits springing from ve