"Indeed! What has he done more?"
"Taken possession of property which is mine."
"By what right is it yours?"
"It was bequeathed me by my grandfather; and since that by his executor."
"The uncle of this Wakefield, I think you told me?"
"Yes. A lawyer. One Thornby; who was induced by death-bed terrors to restore what he had robbed me of while living."
"That is, he lived a knave, and died a fool and a fanatic."
"I suspect that he died as he had lived. Knavery and fanaticism are frequently coupled."
"And how do you intend to proceed?"
"I do not know. I have not yet consulted a lawyer."
"Consulted a lawyer? You surprise me! When last I saw you, I was half convinced by you that a man cannot justly seek redress at law.
Its sources you proved to be corrupt, its powers inadequate, and its decisions never accurate; therefore never just. This was your language. You reprobated those accommodating rules by which I endeavoured to obtain happiness; and urged arguments that made a deep impression upon me. Now that self-interest gives you an impulse, are your principles become as pliant as mine; which you so seriously reproved?"
I paused, and then replied--"I imagine you take some delight in having found an opportunity of retorting upon me; and of laughing at what you still consider as folly."
"Indeed you mistake. I hope by reminding you of your own doctrine to induce you to put it in practice. The virtue that consists only in words is but a vapour."
"Surely you will allow this is an extreme if not a doubtful case. I do not mean to commence an action, till I have considered it very seriously: but I presume you do not require infallibility of me? Or, if you do, it is what I cannot expect from myself. I have frequently been led to doubt whether principles the most indubitable must not bend to the mistakes and inst.i.tutions of society. "This doubt is to me the most painful that can cross the mind: but it is one from which I cannot wholly escape."
"Your tone I find is greatly altered. How strenuous, how firm, how founded, were all your maxims; when last we met."
"And so, I am persuaded, the maxims of truth will always remain."
"Then why depart from them? Another of them, which I likewise recollect to have heard from you, is that the laws which pretend to regulate property, whether by will, entail, or any other descent, are all unjust: for that effects of all kinds should be so appropriated as to produce the greatest good."
"I do not see how that can be denied. But this is strongly to the point in my favour, as I suppose: for the inst.i.tutes of society render the application of the principle impracticable; and therefore I think the property may have a greater chance of being applied to a good purpose, if allotted to me, than if retained by this Wakefield; whose vices are extraordinary."
"You believe him to be a man of some talent?"
"All that know him affirm his understanding would be of the first order, were it worthily employed."
"Then would it not be a good application of the property in contest, if it should both enable and induce him so to employ his understanding?"
"Oh, of that there is no hope."
"How do you know? I believe you have thought the same of me: but you may chance to be mistaken. And now I will tell you a secret. I am in the very predicament of this Wakefield. A relation is dead, who has left his property away from me: by what right is more than I can discover; at least in the spirit of those laws which pretend to regulate such matters: for their spirit is force. Lands wrested from the helpless they consign to the robber. I am in possession; and doubt whether, even according to your code, I ought to resign. I certainly ought not according to my own. I will acknowledge to you that I think well of the man who claims the property I withhold. But I cannot think so well of him as of myself: for I cannot be so well acquainted with his thoughts as with my own. I know my own wants, my own powers, and my own plans. I should be glad to do him good, but I should be sorry to do myself ill. You accuse me of having fallen into erroneous habits, of making false calculations, and of tasting pleasures that are dangerous and of short duration. I have ridiculed your arguments: but I have not forgotten them. Neither has the enquiring spirit that is abroad been unknown to or unnoticed by me. Early powers of mind gave me the early means of indulgence. I revelled in pleasure, squandered all I could procure, and was led by one successful artifice to another, till I became what I can certainly no otherwise justify than by the selfish spirit of the world. In this I find the rule is for each to seize on all that he can, with safety; and to swallow, h.o.a.rd, or waste it at will. I have attempted to profit by vice which I knew not how to avoid. But, if there be a safer road to happiness, I am no idiot: I am as desirous of pursuing it as you can be. The respect of the world, the security from pains and penalties, and the approbation of my own heart, are all of them as dear to me as to you.
I have thought much, have had much experience, and have the power of comparing facts and sensations as largely perhaps as another.
"I will not deny that to trick selfishness by its own arts, to laugh at its stupidity, and to outwit its contemptible cunning, are practices that have tickled my vanity; and have perhaps formed one of my chief sources of pleasure. But habit and pleasure led me to extend such projects; and to prey upon the well-meaning, and the kind, with almost as much avidity as on those of an opposite character.
"However, though I did not want plausible arguments in my own justification, I cannot affirm that my heart was wholly at ease. New thoughts have occurred, other prospects have been contemplated, and my dissatisfaction has increased. You cannot but have remarked that, in the course of human life, most men undergo more than one remarkable change. The sober man becomes a drunkard, the drunkard sober, and the spendthrift sometimes a rational economist: though perhaps more frequently a miser.
"Yet, though I am disposed to alter my conduct, supposing me to possess the means of bidding defiance to mankind, I have no inclination to subject myself to their neglect, their pity, or their scorn. Be it want of courage or want of wisdom, I have not an intention to shut myself out from society. If I may be admitted on fair and liberal terms, I am content: but, I honestly tell you, admitted I will be. I have shut the door of dependency upon myself, were I so inclined. Offices of trust would not be committed to me.
And to live rejected, in poverty and wretchedness, pointed at and pretended to be despised by the knaves and fools with whom the world is filled, is a condition to which I will never submit.
"Consequently, the property of which I have possessed myself I am in either case determined to use every effort to keep. If I am suffered to keep it quietly, my present inclinations are what I have been describing. If contention must come, we must then have a trial of skill upon the opposite system."
I listened to this discourse, attentive to every sentence, anxious for the next, and agitated by various contradictory emotions. I saw the difficulties of the supposed case; and knew not what to answer, or what to advise. That a man like this should become what he seemed half to promise was a thought that consoled and expanded the heart. But that it should depend upon so improbable an event as that of another renouncing a claim, which the law gave him, to property in dispute, was a most painful alternative. My sensations were of hope suddenly kindled, and as suddenly killed.
After waiting some time without any reply from me, he added "Let us suppose, Mr. Trevor, a whimsical, or if you please a strange, coincidence between the man with whom you have been so angry and myself. I mean Wakefield. What if he felt some of the sober propensities toward which I find a kind of a call in myself?"
"He is not to be trusted. In him it would be artifice: or at least n.o.body would believe it could be any thing else."
"Mark now what chance there is, in a world like this, for a man whom it has once deemed criminal to reform. Oppressed, insulted, and pursued by the good, what resource has he but to a.s.sociate with the wicked?"
"He that, with the fairest seeming and the most specious pretences, affirming time after time that, though he had deceived before, he now was honest, he that shall yet again and again repeat his acts of infamy cannot complain, if no man should be willing to trust his happiness to such keeping."
"I find what I am to expect from you. The very same will be said of me."
"No: you have not been equally unprincipled, and vile."
"These are coa.r.s.e or at least harsh terms. However, I take them to myself; and affirm that I have."
"How can you make such an affirmation? How do you know?"
"A man may calculate on probabilities; and this is a moment in which I do not wish to conceal the full estimate which I make of my own conduct from you. Being therefore, seriously and speaking to the best of my judgment, as culpable as Wakefield, let my course of life hereafter be what it will, I find I am to expect no credit for sincerity from you?"
"You do not know Wakefield."
"Neither it seems do you."
"There is something in your countenance, in your conversation, and in the free and undisguised honesty even of your vices, that a man like Wakefield cannot possess."
"Have you forgotten that, though I can be open and honest, I can be artful? Do you not remember billiards, hazard, and Bath?"
"Yes: but Wakefield would be incapable of the qualities of mind which you are now displaying. With you I feel myself in the company of a man of a perverted but a magnanimous spirit. With all your faults, I could hug you to my heart. But Wakefield! who made women and men alike his prey; to whose devilish arts the virtue and happiness of an amiable, I may say a charming, woman were sacrificed; and the life of one of the first of mankind was endangered; that he should resemble you, and especially that he should resemble you with your present inclinations, oh! would that were possible!"
"There is generosity in the wish. It denotes a power in you of allaying one of the most active fiends that torment mankind: the spirit of revenge."
"It is a spirit I own to which I have been too subject; and which I could wish to exorcise for ever."
"Put it to the test. Let us suppose you should discover as much of promise in Wakefield as you imagine you do in me."
"I should then put _him_ to the test. I should demand of him to repair the wrongs he has done Miss Wilmot!"
"What if you should find him already so disposed?"
"Impossible. Or if he were, it would be with some design!"