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Osmund's case and dismiss him. I have private information that he has feathered his nest pretty well and you may be quite sure that if he has not taken bribes from gambling houses for long, it is because he had plenty of other fields in which to make money.
I do not think that you in England have any conception of how the moral tone in the Colonies falls below that high pitch which is maintained at home. I don't know what it is, but it must be the contact with the yellow man and his system of "squeezing" that makes people out here look with comparative indifference on things that would strike people in England as scandalous and wicked.
For instance, it was a common remark among Club men, the ordinary men of business here, during the progress of the Witchell trial that "it was hard luck to run a good man like that in. After all, he had only done what others had been doing and taken 'squeezes' from some beastly gamblers".
I have friends here who bring me all the "gap" and I tell you that before Witchell was convicted, the feeling of the majority of people here was that he had committed a venial offence and that if they were on the jury, they would not convict him!
How we got a verdict, I hardly know. None of us for the prosecution expected it. Of course, many of the better class of men see the enormity of the thing.
+ It is worth remembering that this is a mercantile community and I find such communities have rather lax ideas on questions of common honesty.
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