Chapter LX: Practical Directions in This Matter

NOW, how ought you to proceed in case you have to inform your employers of the thefts of others? That depends a good deal on their characters and dispositions. If they be prudent persons, whom you could rely on to treat the guilty parties with mercy and justice, to keep the information secret, and screen you from being known to have exposed the matter, tell them at once and let them take their measures. But a great many employers are not of this character. They are hasty and violent and inconsiderate of others. In that case you must use precautions.

1st. Confine yourself at first to making known the bare fact of the theft. Say that such or such a thing has disappeared, that you have remarked that things have disappeared from time to time, or that at least they were there at such a time and you have missed them since; that you had thought it your duty to warn them in order that they might take means accordingly.

2d. If your employers ask you the proofs of what you say, give them, but keep back, if you can, the name of the guilty party. If that is impossible, give the name, but with pity and compassion for her or them, and begging that they may be treated with indulgence.

3d. Ask that they will find out for themselves and not take things on your word. Say you are willing to be watched as well as the rest; that you only wished to put them on their guard and leave the rest to them.

4th. If they desire to put you in the position of spying out and collecting evidence against the suspected person, refuse any such office; at least, unless the nature of your service obliges you to it. This is the only case in which it is your duty to act as a spy on others, and it is only duty that should be powerful enough to make you do any such thing. In your position, too, you can hardly keep yourself disinterested and peaceable and calm enough to undertake such a thing; and your employers will, if they are reasonable, not insist upon it, but rather admire your conduct in declining it. Ask that what you have told may be kept secret, for you do not wish to be exposed to the enmity and persecution that would fall upon you if it were known that you had given information about the matter.

Good sense and prudence point out some such rules, in case you are bound in conscience to give information; and good sense and prudence will teach even the most ignorant how to proceed.

A poor old negro man came to a priest not long ago. “Father,” says he, “I want you to advise me. You told me when I saw anything going to loss to tell massa. Now, the other day I saw something going to loss. I didn’t want to tell of anybody; but my conscience told me I ought to tell massa something was going to loss. So, says I, Massa, when you go around the farm and come to such a place, you just keep your eye skinned, and see if you don’t see something going to loss. So massa, he look out bright, and see what was going on, and he hauled ‘em up for it.

“Then they comes to me and ‘cuses me of telling of ‘em. And I says, I didn’t tell of anything. Now, did I do right?”

What a wonderful prudence and charity this simple old man showed! Try and follow his example.

Do not run, neither, to inform in an excess of zeal, when the matter is very trifling and when also you have a mere suspicion without positive proof. You have charity to your fellow-servants to exercise as well as charity to your employers. Guard against all malice and spite, and purify your motives so that it may be a pure conscience that actuates you, and that all may be done for God and for God alone.