LIARS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4443, 16 June 1875, Page 3

LIARS.

(From the City Observer.) Lying comes from so many causes, that were we to illustrate this theme by adducing onetwentieth part of them, we should extend this article beyond all due limit. From our earliest childhood do not we affect smiles and tears which we know will gain our end ?—the end being indulgence and toys. When we grow to man's estate, and learn " how to behave," are not the very graces of manner but enticements, and too often snares which dissemble our actual feelings ? Cannot we ourselves remember the hours and days and weeks we have, under the discipline of " good breeding," been obliged to accept boredom with smiles of lively appreciation, and watch autocratic stupidity with deep respect and unflagging attention ? In our hearts we are conscious of being dissemblers. He who is not so, it is lamentable to say, is a being of no tact. And is not tact that delicate lubricant by which the wheels of society are made to move without noise or hindrance? Charles Dickens, who knew much of man's nature, though lacking the power to portray comprehensively the mind and manner of a gentleman, has, in one of his novels, shown how the telling of an opportune untruth has been as tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. The rendering of a thousand offices and favors, under the plea that their performance is the cause of no sacrifice, while they may be acts of great unselfishness and selfdenial, is the parent of numberless falsehoods, yet falsehoods which are as comfort and hope to the wayfarer, who needs, in his hour of trial, misfortune, or affliction, the sympathy and good works of his brother man. In this world of complexity—complex by reason of its social laws, its natural rights, and its enforcements of society and necessity—man can be only judged by his motives, though, as a rule, he who is the most simple is the most truthful. The subtle brain, though subtlety is often allied to the noblest aspirations and purest intentions, is more times than not the victim of its own reasoning, which reconciles it to foregone conclusions and interested predeterminations.

The Devil is said to be the Father of Lies. Now we, come to the lie proper —the lie vicious, the lie designing, and the lie ensnaring. Here the liar, influenced by the Spirit of Evil, may perpetrate his lies out of a love of wrong-doing, or from motives of selfish gain. As the type representing Evil,, we have lago. The dispoposition of lago was a malignant and cynical one—it expressed a cynicism too vigorous for these days. His mind was, in some aspects, a great one. He possessed largo perception, immense constructive, ability, with an .utter absence of principle ; and conjoined to great powers of reflection, were those of untiring malice. Your most dangerous liars are of this order. The generalityof mankindare no match for them. Some moralists say that lying is not profitable because it is wrong. The fact is, it is not profitable because it so often found out. Only those can afford, from worldly motives, to invent lies, who command not only the imaginative but the constructive capacity of mind. Having once commenced to build, the whole structure must be in keeping. One single stone out of place, and the whole tumbles about the cars of the evil magician who would raise it. lago mirrored subtlety, Othello simplicity. One embodied a land of grandeur in ignominy, the other the splendors of nobility and truth, darkened by the shadow of evilin the former. As to the most modern instance of superb lying, have we not the evidence of Jean Luie yet dwelling on our excited ears ? Here is the liar circumstantia 1 . Though the creature was. himself evil, we will not say his lies come under the head of malice. Jean Luie is by far the greatest, as the most effective liar in modern times. He transcended his great master, the Claimant, and showed himself a proficient in the whole art. His constructive skill has never been surpassed. His story about Roger was more consistent than anything Dean Swift ever wrote. The Lord Chief Justice apparently believed in him ; the British public were amazed to find at last one simple, truthful witness, who was to put the Tichborne case all right: Sir Alexander Cockburn actually accepted his word in lien of his bond, and no cross-examination could discover one brick out of place in the florid temple which Jean Luie put together. The accident, not of any inconsistency nor want of ballast, but of the discovery that bis witness could not be, like Sir Boyle Koche's bird, in two places at' the same time, viz., sailing on the seas and serving his period as a convict, was the sole reason of this marvellous fabrication being torn to pieces. Circumstantial lying, even in a humble way, is more effective than a false statement unattended by detail. Of the two liars, the person who states ho paid a sixpenny-piece, a four-penny-bit, and two pennies would bo more readily believed than the man who merely asserts he handed a shilling, unmindful of the form of the ebin in which it was given. There is yet another class to which we must refer. It is composed of those who, neither unscrupulous, designing, nor Selfish, aro unequal the truth—the timid and the cowardly. The timid and cowardly are those who, to evade a difficulty, find refuge in a lie. It is the mantle ready at hand which makes deeds for the momont invisible. It gives immediate security and protection, and is the resource of the frightened, who would postpone a difficulty rather than meet it.