n.o.body denies that the French army might have ma.s.sacred all whom they me"t in arms at the time and during the agony of storming. But the question is, Whether a resistance of forty-eight hours could create the right, or in the least degree palliate the atrocity, of putting prisoners to death in cold blood? Four days after the storming, when all things had settled back into the quiet routine of ordinary life, men going about their affairs as usual, confidence restored, and, above all things, after the faith of a Christian army had been pledged to these prisoners that not a hair of their heads should be touched, the imagination is appalled by this wholesale butchery--even the apologists of Napoleon are shocked by the amount of murder, though justifying its principle. They admit that there were two divisions of the prisoners--one of fifteen hundred, the other of two thousand five hundred. Their combined amount is equal to a little army; in fact, just about that army with which we fought and won the battle of Maida in Calabria. They composed a force equal to about six English regiments of infantry on the common establishment. Every man of these four thousand soldiers, chiefly brave Albanians--every man of this little army was basely, brutally, in the very spirit of abject poltroonery, murdered--murdered as foully as the infants of Bethlehem; resistance being quite hopeless, not only because they had surrendered their arms, but also because, in reliance on Christian honor, they had quietly submitted to have their hands confined with ropes behind their backs. If this blood did not lie heavy on Napoleon"s heart in his dying hours, it must have been because a conscience originally callous had been seared by the very number of his atrocities.
Now, having stated the case, let us review the casuistical apologies put forward. What was to be done with these prisoners? There lay the difficulty. Could they be retained according to the common usage with regard to prisoners? No; for there was a scarcity of provisions, barely sufficient for the French army itself. Could they be transported to Egypt by sea? No; for two English line-of-battle ships, the Theseus and the Tiger, were cruising in the offing, and watching the interjacent seas of Egypt and Syria. Could they be transported to Egypt by land? No; for it was not possible to spare a sufficient escort; besides, this plan would have included the separate difficulty as to food. Finally, then, as the sole resource left, could they be turned adrift? No; for this was but another mode of saying, "Let us fight the matter over again; reinstate yourselves as our enemies; let us leave Jaffa _re infecta_, and let all begin again _de novo_"--since, a.s.suredly, say the French apologists, in a fortnight from that date, the prisoners would have been found swelling the ranks of those Turkish forces whom Napoleon had reason to expect in front.
Before we take one step in replying to these arguments, let us cite two parallel cases from history: they are interesting for themselves, and they show how other armies, not Christian, have treated the self-same difficulty in practice. The first shall be a leaf taken from the great book of Pagan experience; the second from Mahometan: and both were cases in which the parties called on to cut the knot had been irritated to madness by the parties lying at their disposal.
1. The Pagan Decision.--In that Jewish war of more than three years" duration, which terminated in the destruction of Jerusalem, two cities on the lake of Gennesaret were besieged by Vespasian. One of these was Tiberias: the other Tarichae. Both had been defended with desperation; and from their peculiar situation upon water, and amongst profound precipices, the Roman battering apparatus had not been found applicable to their walls. Consequently the resistance and the loss to the Romans had been unexampled. At the latter siege Vespasian was present in person. Six thousand five hundred had perished of the enemy. A number of prisoners remained, amounting to about forty thousand. What was to be done with them? A great council was held, at which the commander-in-chief presided, a.s.sisted (as Napoleon) by his whole staff. Many of the officers were strongly for having the whole put to death: they used the very arguments of the French--"that, being people now dest.i.tute of habitations, they would infallibly urge any cities which received them into a war:"
fighting, in fact, henceforward upon a double impulse--viz. the original one of insurrection, and a new one of revenge. Vespasian was sensible of all this; and he himself remarked, that, if they had any indulgence of flight conceded, they would a.s.suredly use it against the authors of that indulgence. But still, as an answer to all objections, he insisted on the solitary fact, that he had pledged the Roman faith for the security of their lives; "and to offer violence, after he had given them his right hand, was what he could not bear to think of." Such are the simple words of Josephus.
In the end, overpowered by his council, Vespasian made a sort of compromise. Twelve hundred, as persons who could not have faced the hardships of captivity and travel, he gave up to the sword.
Six thousand select young men were transported as laborers into Greece, with a view to Nero"s scheme, then in agitation, for cutting through the isthmus of Corinth; the main body, amounting to thirty thousand, were sold for slaves; and all the rest, who happened to be subjects of Agrippa, as a mark of courtesy to that prince, were placed at his disposal. Now, in this case, it will be alleged that perhaps the main feature of Napoleon"s case was not realized, viz.
the want of provisions. Every Roman soldier carried on his shoulders a load of seventeen days" provisions, expressly in preparation for such dilemmas; and Palestine was then rank with population gathered into towns. This objection will be noticed immediately: but, meantime, let it be remembered that the prisoners personally appeared before their conquerors in far worse circ.u.mstances than the garrison of Jaffa, except as to the one circ.u.mstance (in which both parties stood on equal ground) of having had their lives guaranteed. For the prisoners of Gennesaret were chiefly aliens and fugitives from justice, who had no national or local interest in the cities which they had tempted or forced into insurrection; they were clothed with no military character whatever; in short, they were pure vagrant incendiaries. And the populous condition of Palestine availed little towards the execution of Vespasian"s sentence: n.o.body in that land would have bought such prisoners; nor, if they would, were there any means available, in the agitated state of the Jewish people, for maintaining their purchase. It would, therefore, be necessary to escort them to Caesarea, as the nearest Roman port for shipping them: thence perhaps to Alexandria, in order to benefit by the corn vessels: and from Alexandria the voyage to remoter places would be pursued at great cost and labor--all so many objections exactly corresponding to those of Napoleon, and yet all overruled by the single consideration of a Roman (viz. a Pagan) right hand pledged to the fulfilment of a promise. As to the twelve hundred old and helpless people ma.s.sacred in cold blood, as regarded themselves it was a merciful doom, and one which many of the Jerusalem captives afterwards eagerly courted. But still it was a shocking case. It was felt to be so by many Romans themselves: Vespasian was overruled in that instance: and the horror which settled upon the mind of t.i.tus, his eldest son, from that very case amongst others, made _him_ tender of human life, and anxiously merciful, through the great tragedies which were now beginning to unrol themselves.
2. _The Mahometan Decision_.--The Emperor Charles V., at different periods, twice invaded the piratical states in the north of Africa. The last of these invasions, directed against Algiers, failed miserably, covering the Emperor with shame, and strewing both land and sea with the wrecks of his great armament. But six years before, he had conducted a most splendid and successful expedition against Tunis, then occupied by Heyradin Barbarossa, a valiant corsair and a prosperous usurper. Barbarossa had an irregular force of fifty thousand men; the Emperor had a veteran army, but not acclimatized, and not much above one half as numerous. Things tended, therefore, strongly to an equilibrium. Such were the circ.u.mstances--such was the position on each side: Barbarossa, with his usual adventurous courage, was drawing out of Tunis in order to fight the invader: precisely at that moment occurred the question of what should be done with the Christian slaves. A stronger case cannot be imagined: they were ten thousand fighting men; and the more horrible it seemed to murder so many defenceless people, the more dreadfully did the danger strike upon the imagination. It was their number which appalled the conscience of those who speculated on their murder; but precisely that it was, when pressed upon the recollection, which appalled the prudence of their Moorish masters.
Barbarossa himself, familiar with b.l.o.o.d.y actions, never hesitated about the proper course: "ma.s.sacre without mercy" was _his_ proposal. But his officers thought otherwise: they were brave men; "and," says Robertson, "they all approved warmly of his intention to fight. But, inured as they were to scenes of bloodshed, the barbarity of his proposal filled them with horror; and Barbarossa, from the dread of irritating them, consented to spare the lives of the slaves." Now, in this case, the penalty attached to mercy, in case it should turn out unhappily for those who so n.o.bly determined to stand the risk, cannot be more tragically expressed, than by saying that it _did_ turn out unhappily. We need not doubt that the merciful officers were otherwise rewarded; but for this world and the successes of this world the ruin was total. Barbarossa was defeated in the battle which ensued; flying pell-mell to Tunis with the wrecks of his army, he found these very ten thousand Christians in possession of the fort and town: they turned his own artillery upon himself: and his overthrow was sealed by that one act of mercy--so unwelcome from the very first to his own Napoleonish temper.
Thus we see how this very case of Jaffa had been Settled by Pagan and Mahometan casuists, where courage and generosity happened to be habitually prevalent. Now, turning back ta the pseudo-Christian army, let us very briefly review the arguments for _them_.
First, there were no provisions. But how happened that? or how is it proved? Feeding the prisoners from the 6th to the 10th inclusively of March, proves that there was no instant want. And how was it, then, that Napoleon had run his calculations so narrowly! The prisoners were just 33 per cent, on the total French army, as originally detached from Cairo. Some had already perished of that army: and in a few weeks more, one half of that army had perished, or six thousand men, whose rations were hourly becoming disposable for the prisoners. Secondly, a most important point, resources must have been found in Jaffa.
But thirdly, if not, if Jaffa were so ill-provisioned, how had it ever dreamed of standing a siege? And knowing its condition, as Napoleon must have done from deserters and otherwise, how came he to adopt so needless a measure as that of storming the place? Three days must have compelled it to surrender upon any terms, if it could be really true that, after losing vast numbers of its population in the a.s.sault (for it was the bloodshed of the a.s.sault which originally suggested the interference of the aides-de-camp,) Jaffa was not able to allow half-rations even to a _part_ of its garrison for a few weeks. What was it meant that the whole should have done, had Napoleon simply blockaded it? Through all these contradictions we see the truth looming as from behind a mist: it was not because provisions failed that Napoleon butchered four thousand young men in cold blood; it was because he wished to signalize his entrance into Palestine by a sanguinary act, such as might strike terror far and wide, resound through Syria as well as Egypt, and paralyze the nerves of his enemies. Fourthly, it is urged that, if he had turned the prisoners loose, they would have faced him again in his next battle. How so? Prisoners without arms?
But then, perhaps, they could have retreated upon Acre, where it is known that Djezzar, the Turkish pacha, had a great magazine of arms. That might have been dangerous, if any such retreat had been open. But surely the French army, itself under orders for Acre, could at least have intercepted the Acre route from the prisoners.
No other remained but that through the defiles of Naplous. In this direction, however, there was no want of men. Beyond the mountains cavalry only were in use: and the prisoners had no horses, nor habits of acting as cavalry. In the defiles it was riflemen who were wanted, and the prisoners had no rifles; besides that, the line of the French operations never came near to that route. Then, again, if provisions were so scarce, how were the unarmed prisoners to obtain them on the simple allegation that they had fought unsuccessfully against the French!
But, finally, one conclusive argument there is against this d.a.m.nable atrocity of Napoleon"s, which, in all future Lives of Napoleon, one may expect to see-noticed, viz., that if the circ.u.mstances of Palestine were such as to forbid the ordinary usages of war, if (which we are far from believing) want of provisions made it indispensable to murder prisoners in cold blood--in that case a _Syrian war_ became impossible to a man of honor; and the guilt commences from a higher point than Jaffa. Already at Cairo, and in the elder stages of the expedition, planned in face of such afflicting necessities, we read the counsels of a murderer; of one rightly carrying such a style of warfare towards the ancient country of the a.s.sa.s.sins; of one not an apostate merely from Christian humanity, but from the lowest standard of soldierly honor. He and his friends abuse Sir Hudson Lowe as a jailer. But far better to be a jailer, and faithful to one"s trust, than to be the cut-throat of unarmed men.
One consideration remains, which we reserve to the end; because it has been universally overlooked, and because it is conclusive against Napoleon, even on his own hypothesis of an absolute necessity.
In Vespasian"s case it does not appear that he had gained anything for himself, or for his army, by his promise of safety to the enemy: he had simply gratified his own feelings by holding out prospects of final escape. But Napoleon had absolutely seduced the four thousand men from a situation of power, from vantage-ground, by his treacherous promise. And when the French apologists plead--"If we had dismissed the prisoners we should soon have had to fight the battle over again"--they totally forget the state of the facts: they had not fought the battle at all: they had evaded the battle as to these prisoners: as many enemies as could have faced them _de novo_, so many had they bought off from fighting. Forty centuries of armed men, brave and despairing, and firing from windows, must have made prodigious havoc: and this havoc the French evaded by a trick, by a perfidy, perhaps unexampled in the annals of military men.
II. _Piracy._-It is interesting to trace the revolutions of moral feeling. In the early stages of history we find piracy in high esteem. Thucydides tells us that ??ste?a, or robbery, when conducted _at sea_, (_i. e._ robbery on non-Grecian people,) was held in the greatest honor by his countrymen in elder ages. And this, in fact, is the true station, this point of feeling for primitive man, from which we ought to view the robberies and larcenies of savages. Captain Cook, though a good and often a wise man, erred in this point. He took a plain Old Bailey view of the case; and very sincerely believed, (as all sea-captains ever have done,) that a savage must be a bad man, who would purloin anything that was not his. Yet it is evident that the poor child of uncultured nature, who saw strangers descending, as it were from the moon, upon his aboriginal forests and lawns, must have viewed them under the same angle as the Greeks of old. They were no part of any system to which he belonged; and why should he not plunder them? By force if he could: but, where that was out of the question, why should he not take the same credit for an undetected theft that the Spartan gloried in taking? To be detected was both shame and loss; but he was certainly ent.i.tled to any glory which might seem to settle upon success, not at all less than the more pretending citizen of Sparta.
Besides all which, amongst us civilized men the rule obtains universally--that the state and duties of peace are to be presumed until war is proclaimed. Whereas, amongst rude nations, war is understood to be the rule--war, open or covert, until suspended by express contract. _Bellum inter omnes_ is the natural state of things for all, except those who view themselves as brothers by natural affinity, by local neighborhood, by common descent, or who make themselves brothers by artificial contracts. Captain Cook, who overlooked all this, should have begun by arranging a solemn treaty with the savages amongst whom he meant to reside for any length of time. This would have prevented many an angry broil then, and since then: it would also have prevented his own tragical fate.
Meantime the savage is calumniated and misrepresented, for want of being understood.
There is, however, amongst civilized nations a mode of piracy still tolerated, or which _was_ tolerated in the last war, but is now ripe for extinction. It is that war of private men upon private men, which goes on under the name of privateering. Great changes have taken place in our modes of thinking within the last twenty-five years; and the greatest change of all lies in the thoughtful spirit which we now bring to the investigation of all public questions.
We have no doubt at all that, when next a war arises at sea, the whole system of privateering will be condemned by the public voice.
And the next step after that will be, to explode all war whatsoever, public or private, upon commerce. War will be conducted _by_ belligerents and _upon_ belligerents exclusively. To imagine the extinction of war itself, in the present stage of human advance, is, we fear, idle. Higher modes of civilization--an earth more universally colonized--the _h.o.m.o sapiens_ of Linnaeus more humanized, and other improvements must pave the way for _that_: but amongst the earliest of those improvements, will be the abolition of war carried into quarters where the spirit of war never ought to penetrate. Privateering will be abolished. War, on a national scale, is often enn.o.bling, and one great instrument of pioneering for civilization; but war of private citizen upon his fellow, in another land, is always demoralizing.
III. _Usury._--This ancient subject of casuistry we place next to _piracy_, for a significant reason: the two practices have both changed their public reputation as civilization has advanced, but inversely--they have interchanged characters. Piracy, beginning in honor, has ended in infamy: and at this moment it happens to be the sole offence against society in which _all_ the accomplices, without pity or intercession, let them be ever so numerous, are punished capitally. Elsewhere, we decimate, or even centesimate: here, we are all children of Rhadamanthus. Usury, on the other hand, beginning in utter infamy, has travelled upwards into considerable esteem; and Mr. "10 _per shent_" stands a very fair chance of being p.r.i.c.ked for sheriff next year; and, in one generation more, of pa.s.sing for a great patriot. Charles Lamb complained that, by gradual changes, not on his part, but in the spirit of refinement, he found himself growing insensibly into "an indecent character."
The same changes which carry some downwards, carry others up; and Shylock himself will soon be viewed as an eminent martyr or confessor for the truth as it is in the Alley. Seriously, however, there is nothing more remarkable in the history of casuistical ethics, than the utter revolution in human estimates of usury. In this one point the Hebrew legislator agreed with the Roman--Deuteronomy with the Twelve Tables. Cicero mentions that the elder Cato being questioned on various actions, and how he ranked them in his esteem, was at length asked, _Quid fnerari?_--how did he rank usury?
His indignant answer was, by a retorted question--_Quid hominem occidere?_--what do I think of murder? In this particular case, as in some others, we must allow that our worthy ancestors and forerunners upon this terraqueous planet were enormous blockheads.
And their "exquisite reason" for this opinion on usury, was quite worthy of Sir Andrew Aguecheek:--"money," they argued, "could not breed money: one guinea was neither father nor mother to another guinea: and where could be the justice of making a man pay for the use of a thing which that thing could never produce?" But, venerable blockheads, that argument applies to the case of him who locks up his borrowed guinea. Suppose him _not_ to lock it up, but to buy a hen, and the hen to lay a dozen eggs; one of those eggs will be so much per cent.; and the thing borrowed has then produced its own _foenus_. A still greater inconsistency was this: Our ancestors would have rejoined--that many people did not borrow in order to produce, _i. e._ to use the money as capital, but in order to spend, _i. e._ to use it as income. In that case, at least, the borrowers must derive the _foenus_ from some other fund than the thing borrowed: for, by the supposition, the thing borrowed has been spent. True; but on the same principle these ancestors ought to have forbidden every man to sell any article whatsoever to him who paid for it out of other funds than those produced by the article sold. Mere logical consistency required this: it happens, indeed, to be impossible: but that only argues their entire non-comprehension of their own doctrines.
The whole history of usury teems with instruction: 1st, comes the monstrous absurdity in which the proscription of usury anch.o.r.ed; 2d, the absolute compulsion and pressure of realities in forcing men into a timid abandonment of their own doctrines; 3d, the unconquerable power of sympathy, which humbled all minds to one level, and forced the strongest no less than the feeblest intellects into the same infatuation of stupidity. The casuistry of ancient moralists on this question, especially of the scholastic moralists, such as Suarrez, &c.--the oscillations by which they ultimately relaxed and tied up the law, just as their erring conscience, or the necessities of social life prevailed, would compose one of the interesting chapters in this science. But the Jewish relaxation is the most amusing: it coincides altogether with the theory of savages as to property, which we have already noticed under the head of Piracy. All men on earth, except Jews, were held to be fair subjects for usury; not as though usury were a just or humane thing: no--it was a belligerent act: but then all foreigners in the Jewish eye were enemies for the same reason that the elder Romans had a common term for an enemy and a stranger. And it is probable that many Jews at this day, in exercising usury, conceive themselves to be seriously making war, in a privateering fashion, upon Christendom, and practising reprisals on the Gentiles for ruined Jerusalem.
IV. _Bishop Gibson"s Chronicon Preciosum_.--Many people are aware that this book is a record of prices, as far as they were recoverable, pursued through six centuries of English History. But they are not aware that this whole inquiry is simply the machinery for determining a casuistical question. The question was this:--An English College, but we cannot say in which of our universities, had been founded in the reign of Henry VI., and between 1440 and 1460--probably it might be King"s College, Cambridge. Now, the statutes of this college make it imperative upon every candidate for a fellowship to swear that he does not possess an estate in land of inheritance, nor a perpetual pension amounting to _five pounds per annum_, It is certain, however, that the founder did not mean superst.i.tiously so much gold or silver as made _nominally_ the sum of five pounds, but so much as virtually represented the five pounds of Henry VI."s time--so much as would buy the same quant.i.ty of ordinary comfort. Upon this, therefore, arose two questions for the casuist: (1.) What sum did substantially represent, in 1706, (the year of publishing the _Chron. Preciosum_,) that nominal 5 of 1440? (2.) Supposing this ascertained, might a man with safe conscience retain his fellowship by swearing that he had not 5 a-year, when perhaps he had 20, provided that 20 were proved to be less in efficacy than the 5 of the elder period?
Verbally this was perjury: was it such in reality and to the conscience?
The _Chronicle_ is not, as by its t.i.tle the reader might suppose, a large folio: on the contrary, it is a small octavo of less than 200 pages. But it is exceedingly interesting, very ably reasoned, and as circ.u.mstantial in its ill.u.s.trations as the good bishop"s opportunities allowed him to make it. In one thing he was more liberal than Sir William Petty, Dr. Davenant, &c., or any elder economists of the preceding century; he would have statistics treated as a cla.s.sical or scholar-like study; and he shows a most laudable curiosity in all the questions arising out of his main one. His answer to _that_ is as follows: 1st, that 5 in Henry VI."s time contained forty ounces of silver, whereas in Queen Anne"s it contained only nineteen ounces and one-third; so that, in reality, the 5 of 1440, was, even as to weight of silver, rather more than 10 of 1706. 2d, as to the efficacy of 10 in Henry VI."s reign: upon reviewing the main items of common household (and therefore of common academic) expenditure, and pursuing this review through bad years and good years, the bishop decides that it is about equal to 25 or 30 of Queen Anne"s reign. Sir George Shuckburgh has since treated this casuistical problem more elaborately: but Bishop Gibson it was, who, in his _Chronicon Preciosum_, first broke the ice.
After this, he adds an ingenious question upon the apparently parallel case of a freeholder swearing himself worth 40s. per annum as a qualification for an electoral vote: ought not he to hold himself perjured in voting upon an estate often so much below the original 40s. contemplated by Parliament, for the very same reason that a collegian is _not_ perjured in holding a fellowship, whilst, in fact, he may have four or five times the nominal sum privileged by the founder? The bishop says _no_; and he distinguishes the case thus: the college 5 must always mean a virtual 5--a 5 in efficacy, and not merely in name. But the freeholder"s 40s. is not so restricted; and for the following reason--that this sum is constantly coming under the review of Parliament. It is clear, therefore, from the fact of not having altered it, that Parliament is satisfied with a merely nominal 40s., and sees no reason to alter it. True, it was a rule enacted by the Parliament of 1430; at which time 40s. was even in weight of silver equal to 80s. of 1706; and in virtue or power of purchasing equal to 12 at the least. The qualification of a freeholder is, therefore, much lower in Queen Anne"s days than in those of Henry VI. But what of that? Parliament, it must be presumed, sees good reason why it _should_ be lower. And at all events, till the law operates amiss, there can be no reason to alter it.
A case of the same kind with those argued by Bishop Gibson arose often in trials for larceny--we mean as to that enactment which fixed the minimum for a capital offence. This case is noticed by the bishop, and juries of late years often took the casuistry into their own hands. They were generally thought to act with no more than a proper humanity to the prisoner; but still people thought such juries incorrect. Whereas, if Bishop Gibson is right, who allows a man to swear positively that he has not 5 a-year, when nominally he has much more, such juries were even technically right.
However, this point is now altered by Sir Robert Peel"s reforms.
But there are other cases, and especially those which arise not between different times but between different places, which will often require the same kind of casuistry as that which is so ably applied by the good and learned bishop.
V. _Suicide_.--It seems pa.s.sing strange that the main argument upon which Pagan moralists relied in their unconditional condemnation of suicide, viz. the supposed a.n.a.logy of our situation in life to that of a sentinel mounting guard, who cannot, without a capital offence, quit his station until called off by his commanding officer, is dismissed with contempt by a Christian moralist, viz.
Paley. But a stranger thing still is--that the only man who ever wrote a book in palliation of suicide, should have been not only a Christian--not only an official minister and dignitary of a metropolitan Christian church--but also a scrupulously pious man.
We allude, as the reader will suppose, to Dr. Donne, Dean of St.
Paul"s. His opinion is worthy of consideration. Not that we would willingly diminish, by one hair"s weight, the reasons against suicide; but it is never well to rely upon ignorance or inconsideration for the defence of any principle whatever. Donne"s notion was, (a notion, however, adopted in his earlier years,) that as we do not instantly p.r.o.nounce a man a murderer upon hearing that he has killed a fellow-creature, but, according to the circ.u.mstances of the case, p.r.o.nounce his act either murder, or manslaughter, or justifiable homicide; so by parity of reason, suicide is open to distinctions of the same or corresponding kinds; that there may be such a thing as self-homicide not less than self-murder--culpable self-homicide --justifiable self-homicide. Donne called his Essay by the Greek name _Biathanatos,_[Footnote: This word, however, which occurs nowhere that we remember, except in Lampridius, one of the Augustan historians, is here applied to Heliogabalus; and means, not the act of suicide, but a suicidal person. And possibly Donne, who was a good scholar, may so mean it to be understood in his t.i.tle-page.
Heliogabalus, says Lampridius, had been told by the Syrian priests that he should be _Biathanatos_, _i. e._ should commit suicide. He provided, therefore, ropes of purple and of gold intertwisted, that he might hang himself imperatorially. He provided golden swords, that he might run himself through as became Caesar. He had poisons inclosed in jewels, that he might drink his farewell heeltaps, if drink he must, in a princely style. Other modes of august death he had prepared. Unfortunately all were unavailing, for he was murdered and dragged through the common sewers by ropes, without either purple or gold in their base composition. The poor fellow has been sadly abused in history; but, after all, he was a mere boy, and as mad as a March hare.] meaning _violent death._ But a thing equally strange and a blasphemy almost unaccountable, is the fancy of a Prussian or Saxon baron, who wrote a book to prove that Christ committed suicide, for which he had no other argument than that, in fact, he had surrendered himself unresistingly into the hands of his enemies, and had in a manner caused his own death.
This, however, describes the case of every martyr that ever was or can be. It is the very merit and grandeur of the martyr, that he proclaims the truth with his eyes open to the consequences of proclaiming it. Those consequences are connected with the truth, but not by a natural link: the connection is by means of false views, which it is the very business of the martyr to destroy. And, if a man founds my death upon an act which my conscience enjoys, even though I am aware and fully warned that he will found my death upon it, I am not, therefore, guilty of suicide. For, by the supposition, I was obliged to the act in question by the highest of all obligations, viz. moral obligation, which far transcends all physical obligation; so that, whatever excuse attaches to a physical necessity, attaches, _a fortiori_, to the moral necessity. The case is, therefore, precisely the same as if he had said,--"I will put you to death if the frost benumbs your feet." The answer is--"I cannot help this effect of frost." Far less can I help revealing a celestial truth.
I have no power, no liberty, to forbear. And, in killing me, he punishes me for a mere necessity of my situation and my knowledge.
It is urged that brutes never commit suicide--except, indeed, the salamander, who has been suspected of loose principles in this point; and we ourselves know a man who constantly affirmed that a horse of his had committed suicide, by violently throwing himself from the summit of a precipice. "But why,"--as we still asked him--"why should the horse have committed felony on himself? Were oats rising in the market?--or was he in love?--or vexed by politics?--or could a horse, and a young one rising four, be supposed to suffer from _taedium vitae_?" Meantime, as respects the general question of brute suicides, two points must be regarded,--1st, That brutes are cut off from the vast world of moral and imaginative sufferings entailed upon man; 2dly, That this very immunity presupposes another immunity--
"A cool suspense from pleasure and from pain,"
in the far coa.r.s.er and less irritable animal organization which must be the basis of an insulated physical sensibility. Brutes can neither suffer from intellectual pa.s.sions, nor, probably, from very complex derangements of the animal system; so that in them the motives to suicide, the temptations to suicide, are prodigiously diminished. Nor are they ever alive to "the sublime attractions of the grave." It is, however, a humiliating reflection, that, if any brutes can feel such aspirations, it must be those which are under the care of man. Doubtless the happiness of brutes is sometimes extended by man; but also, too palpably, their misery.
Why suicide is not noticed in the _New Testament_ is a problem yet open to the profound investigator.
VI. _Duelling_.--No one case, in the vast volume of casuistry, is so difficult to treat with justice and reasonable adaptation to the spirit of modern times, as this of duelling. For, as to those who reason all upon one side, and never hearken in good faith to objections or difficulties, such people convince n.o.body but those who were already convinced before they began. At present, (1839,) society has for some years been taking a lurch to one side _against_ duelling: but inevitably a reaction will succeed; for, after all, be it as much opposed as it may to Christianity, duelling performs such important functions in society as now const.i.tuted--we mean by the sense of instant personal accountability which it diffuses universally amongst gentlemen, and all who have much sensibility to the point of honor--that, for one life which it takes away as an occasional sacrifice, it saves myriads from outrage and affronts--millions from the anxiety attached to inferior bodily strength. However, it is no part of our present purpose to plead the cause of duelling, though pleaded it must be, more fairly than it ever has been, before any progress will be made in suppressing it.
But the point which we wish to notice at present, is the universal blunder about the Romans and Greeks. They, it is alleged, fought no duels; and occasion is thence taken to make very disadvantageous reflections upon us, the men of this Christian era, who, in defiance of our greater light, _do_ fight duels. Lord Bacon himself is duped by this enormous blunder, and founds upon it a long speech in the Star-Chamber.
Now, in the first place, who does not see that, if the Pagans really _were_ enabled by their religion to master their movements of personal anger and hatred, the inevitable inference will be to the disadvantage of Christianity. It would be a clear case. Christianity and Paganism have been separately tried as means of self-control; Christianity has flagrantly failed; Paganism succeeded universally; not having been found unequal to the task in any one known instance.
But this is not so. A profounder error never existed. No religious influence whatever restrained the Greek or the Roman from fighting a duel. It was purely a civic influence, and it was sustained by this remarkable usage--in itself a standing opprobrium to both Greek and Roman--viz. the unlimited license of tongue allowed to anger in the ancient a.s.semblies and senates. This liberty of foul language operated in two ways: 1st, Being universal, it took away all ground for feeling the words of an antagonist as any personal insult; so he had rarely a motive for a duel. 2dly, the anger was thus less acute; yet, if it _were_ acute, then this Billingsgate resource furnished an instantaneous vehicle for expectorating the wrath. Look, for example, at Cicero"s orations against Mark Antony, or Catiline, or against Piso. This last person was a senator of the very highest rank, family, connections; yet, in the course of a few pages, does Cicero, a man of letters, polished to the extreme standard of Rome, address him by the elegant appellations of "filth,"
"mud," "carrion," (_projectum cadaver_.) How could Piso have complained? It would have been said-"Oh, there"s an end of republican simplicity, if plain speaking is to be put down." And then it would have been added invidiously--"Better men than ever stood in your shoes have borne worse language. Will you complain of what was tolerated by Africa.n.u.s, by Paulus Aemilius, by Marius, by Sylla?"
Who could reply to that? And why should Piso have even wished to _call out_ his foul-mouthed antagonist? On the contrary, a far more genial revenge awaited him than any sword could have furnished.
Pa.s.s but an hour, and you will hear Piso speaking--it will then be his turn--every dog has his day; and, though not quite so eloquent as his brilliant enemy, he is yet eloquent enough for the purposes of revenge--he is eloquent enough to call Cicero "filth," "mud,"
carrion."
No: the reason of our modern duelling lies deeper than is supposed: it lies in the principle of _honor_--a direct product of chivalry--as that was in part a product of Christianity. The sense of honor did not exist in Pagan times. Natural equity, and the equity of civil laws--those were the two moral forces under which men acted. Honor applies to cases where both those forces are silent. And precisely because they had no such sense, and because their revenge emptied itself by the basest of all channels, viz.
foul speaking and license of tongue, was it that the Greeks and Romans had no duelling. It was no glory to them that they had not, but the foulest blot on their moral grandeur.
How it was that Christianity was able, mediately, to generate the principle of honor, is a separate problem. But this is the true solution of that common casuistical question about duelling.
PART II.
--"Celebrare domestlca facta."--HOR.
In a former notice of Casuistry, we touched on such cases only as were of public bearings, or such as (if private) were of rare occurrence and of a tragical standard. But ordinary life, in its most domestic paths, teems with cases of difficult decision; or if not always difficult in the decision of the abstract question at issue, difficult in the accommodation of that decision to immediate practice. A few of these more homely cases, intermixed with more public ones, we shall here select and review; for, according to a remark in our first paper, as social economy grows more elaborate, the demand grows more intense for such circ.u.mstantial morality. As man advances, casuistry advances. Principles are the same: but the abstraction of principles from accidents and circ.u.mstances becomes a work of more effort. Aristotle, in his _Nicomachean Ethics_, has not one case; Cicero, three hundred years after, has a few; Paley, eighteen hundred years after Cicero, has many.
There is also something in place as well as in time--in the people as well as the century--which determines the amount of interest in casuistry. We once heard an eminent person delivering it as an opinion, derived from a good deal of personal experience--_that of all European nations, the British was that which suffered most from remorse_; and that, if internal struggles during temptation, or sufferings of mind after yielding to temptation, were of a nature to be measured upon a scale, or could express themselves sensibly to human knowledge, the annual report from Great Britain, its annual balance-sheet, by comparison with those from continental Europe, would show a large excess. At the time of hearing this remarkable opinion, we, the hearers, were young; and we had little other ground for a.s.sent or dissent, than such general impressions of national differences as we might happen to have gathered from the several literatures of Christian nations. These were of a nature to confirm the stranger"s verdict; and it will not be denied that much of national character comes forward in literature: but these were not sufficient. Since then, we have had occasion to think closely on that question. We have had occasion to review the public records of Christendom; and beyond all doubt the public conscience, the international conscience, of a people, is the reverberation of its private conscience. History is but the converging into a focus of what is moving in the domestic life below; a set of great circles expressing and summing up, on the dial-plate, the motions of many little circles in the machinery within. Now History, what may be called the Comparative History of Modern Europe, countersigns the traveller"s opinion.
"So, then," says a foreigner, or an Englishman with foreign sympathies, "the upshot and amount of this doctrine is, that England is more moral than other nations." "Well," we answer, "and what of that?"