Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect.

Leacock’s aphorism is a dry, satirical inversion of the usual moral ideal of trust. Instead of trust arising from presumed honesty, he suggests it can function as a practical social calculation: people cooperate because they have learned—through experience, custom, or law—how much self-interest, corner-cutting, or deception is “normal” and therefore can be priced in. The line skewers modern commercial and political life, where relationships often depend less on virtue than on predictable incentives and enforceable limits. Its sting lies in implying that a stable society may rest not on goodness, but on reliably bounded bad behavior.