Observe, however, that the doctrine went no farther than as to conscientiousness; the principle out of which comes sorrow for all violation of duty; out of which comes a high standard of duty.
Meantime both the "sorrow" and the "high standard" are very compatible with a lax performance. But suppose we _had_ gone as far as the objector supposes, and had ascribed a moral superiority every way to England, what is there in _that_ to shock probability?
Whether the general probability from a.n.a.logy, or the special probability from the circ.u.mstances of this particular case? We all know that there is no general improbability in supposing one nation, or one race, to outrun another. The modern Italians have excelled all nations in musical sensibility, and in genius for painting. They have produced far better music than all the rest of the world put together. And four of their great painters have not been approached hitherto by the painters of _any_ nation. That facial structure, again, which is called the Caucasian, and which, through the ancient Greeks, has travelled westward to the nations of Christendom, and from them (chiefly ourselves) has become the Transatlantic face, is, past all disputing, the finest type of the human countenance divine on this planet. And most other nations, Asiatic or African, have hitherto put up with this insult; except, indeed, the Kalmuck Tartars, who are highly indignant at our European vanity in this matter; and some of them, says Bergmann, the German traveller, absolutely howl with rage, whilst others only laugh hysterically, at any man"s having the insanity to prefer the Grecian features to the Kalmuck. Again, amongst the old pagan nations, the Romans seem to have had "the call" for going ahead; and they fulfilled their destiny in spite of all that the rest of the world could do to prevent them. So that, far from it being an improbable or unreasonable a.s.sumption, superiority (of one kind or other) has been the indefeasible inheritance of this and that nation, at all periods of history.
Still less is the notion tenable of any special improbability applying to this particular pretension. For centuries has England enjoyed--1st, civil liberty; 2d, the Protestant faith. Now in those two advantages are laid the grounds, the very necessities, _a priori_, of a superior morality. But watch the inconsistency of men: ask one of these men who dispute this English pretension _mordicus_; ask him, or bid an Austrian serf ask him, what are the benefits of Protestantism, and what the benefits of liberty, that he should risk anything to obtain either. Hear how eloquently he insists upon their beneficial results, severally and jointly; and notice that he places foremost among those results a pure morality. Is he wrong? No: the man speaks bare truth. But what brute oblivion he manifests of his own doctrine, in taxing with arrogance any people for claiming one of those results _in esse_, which he himself could see so clearly _in posse!_ Talk no more of freedom, or of a pure religion, as fountains of a moral pre-eminence, if those who have possessed them in combination for the longest s.p.a.ce of time may not, without arrogance, claim the vanward place amongst the nations of Europe.
So far as to the presumptions, general or special; so far as to the probabilities, a.n.a.logous or direct, in countenance of this British claim. Finally, when we come to the proofs, from fact and historical experience, we might appeal to a singular case in the records of our Exchequer; viz., that for much more than a century back, our _Gazette_ and other public advertisers, have acknowledged a series of anonymous remittances from those who, at some time or other, had appropriated public money. We understand that no corresponding fact can be cited from foreign records. Now, this is a direct instance of that compunction which our travelled friend insisted on. But we choose rather to throw ourselves upon the general history of Great Britain, upon the spirit of her policy, domestic or foreign, and upon the universal principles of her public morality.
Take the case of public debts, and the fulfilment of contracts to those who could not have compelled the fulfilment; we first set this precedent. All nations have now learned that honesty in such cases is eventually the best policy; but this they learned from our experience, and not till nearly all of them had tried the other policy. We it was, who, under the most trying circ.u.mstances of war, maintained the sanct.i.ty from taxation of all foreign investments in our funds. Our conduct with regard to slaves, whether in the case of slavery or of the slave-trade--how prudent it may always have been, we need not inquire; as to its moral principles, they went so far ahead of European standards, that we were neither comprehended nor believed. The perfection of romance was ascribed to us by all who did not reproach us with the perfection of Jesuitical knavery; by many our motto was supposed to be no longer the old one of "_divide et impera_," but "_annihila et appropria_."
Finally, looking back to our dreadful conflicts with the three conquering despots of modern history, Philip II. of Spain, Louis XIV., and Napoleon, we may incontestably boast of having been single in maintaining the general equities of Europe by war upon a colossal scale, and by our councils in the general congresses of Christendom.
Such a review would amply justify the traveller"s remarkable _dictum_ upon the principle of remorse, and therefore of conscientiousness, as existing in greater strength amongst the people of Great Britain.
In the same proportion we may a.s.sume, in such a people, a keener sensibility to moral distinctions; more attention to shades of difference in the modes of action; more anxiety as to the grounds of action. In the same proportion we may a.s.sume a growing and more direct regard to casuistry; which is precisely the part of ethics that will be continually expanding, and continually throwing up fresh doubts. Not as though a moral principle could ever be doubtful.
But that the growing complexity of the circ.u.mstances will make it more and more difficult in judgment to detach the principle from the case; or, in practice, to determine the application of the principle to the facts. It will happen, therefore, as Mr. Coleridge used to say happened in all cases of importance, that extremes meet: for casuistical ethics will be most consulted by two cla.s.ses the most opposite to each other--by those who seek excuses for evading their duties, and by those who seek a special fulness of light for fulfilling them.
CASE I.
HEALTH.
Strange it is, that moral treatises, when professing to lay open the great edifice of human duties, and to expose its very foundations, should not have begun with, nay, should not have noticed at all, those duties which a man owes to himself, and, foremost amongst them, the duty of cultivating his own health. For it is evident, that, from mere neglect of that one personal duty, with the very best intentions possible, all other duties whatever may become impossible; for good intentions exist in all stages of efficiency, from the fugitive impulse to the realizing self-determination. In this life, the elementary blessing is health. What! do we presume to place it before peace of mind? Far from it; but we speak of the _genesis_; of the succession in which all blessings descend; not as to time, but the order of dependency. All morality implies free agency: it presumes beyond all other conditions an agent who is in perfect possession of his own volitions. Now, it is certain that a man without health is not uniformly master of his own purposes. Often he cannot be said either to be _in_ the path of duty or _out_ of it; so incoherent are the actions of a man forced back continually from the objects of his intellect and choice upon some alien objects dictated by internal wretchedness.
It is true that, by possibility, some derangements of the human system are not incompatible with happiness: and a celebrated German author of the last century, Von Hardenberg--better known by his a.s.sumed name of Novalis--maintained, that certain modes of ill health, or valetudinarianism, were pre-requisites towards certain modes of intellectual development. But the ill health to which he pointed could not have gone beyond a luxurious indisposition; nor the corresponding intellectual purposes have been other than narrow, fleeting, and anomalous. Inflammatory action, in its earlier stages, is sometimes connected with voluptuous sensations: so is the preternatural stimulation of the liver. But these states, as pleasurable states, are transitory. All fixed derangements of the health are doubly hostile to the moral energies: first, through the intellect, which they debilitate unconsciously in many ways; and next, both consciously and semi-consciously, through the will.
The judgment is, perhaps, too clouded to fix upon a right purpose: the will too enfeebled to pursue it.
Two general remarks may be applied to all, interferences of the physical with the moral sanity; 1st, That it is not so much by absolute deductions of time that ill health operates upon the serviceableness of a man, as by its lingering effects upon his temper and his animal spirits. Many a man has not lost one hour of his life from illness, whose faculties of usefulness have been most seriously impaired through gloom, or untuned feelings; 3d, That it is not the direct and known risks to our health which act with the most fatal effects, but the semi-conscious condition, the atmosphere of circ.u.mstances, with which artificial life surrounds us. The great cities of Europe, perhaps London beyond all others, under the modern modes of life and business, create a vortex of preternatural tumult, a rush and frenzy of excitement, which is fatal to far more than are heard of as express victims to that system.
The late Lord Londonderry"s nervous seizure was no solitary or rare case. So much we happen to know. We are well a.s.sured by medical men of great London practice, that the case is one of growing frequency. In Lord Londonderry it attracted notice for reasons of obvious personal interest, as well as its tragical catastrophe.
But the complaint, though one of modern growth, is well known, and comes forward under a most determinate type as to symptoms, among the mercantile cla.s.s. The original predisposition to it, lies permanently in the condition of London life, especially as it exists for public men. But the immediate existing cause, which fires the train always ready for explosion, is invariably some combination of perplexities, such as are continually gathering into dark clouds over the heads of great merchants; sometimes only teasing and molesting, sometimes menacing and alarming. These perplexities are generally moving in counteracting paths: some progressive, some retrograde. There lies a man"s safety. But at times it will happen that all comes at once; and then comes a shock such as no brain already predisposed by a London life, is strong enough (but more truly let us say--coa.r.s.e enough) to support.
Lord Londonderry"s case was precisely of that order: he had been worried by a long session of Parliament, which adds the crowning irritation in the interruption of sleep. The nervous system, ploughed up by intense wear and tear, is denied the last resource of natural relief. In this crisis, already perilous, a new tempest was called in--of all the most terrific--the tempest of anxiety: and from what source? Anxiety from fear, is bad: from hope delayed, is bad: but worst of all is anxiety from responsibility, in cases where disease or weakness makes a man feel that he is unequal to the burden. The diplomatic interests of the country had been repeatedly confided to Lord Londonderry: he had justified that confidence: he had received affecting testimonies of the honor which belonged to such a situation. But a short time before his fatal seizure, in pa.s.sing through Birmingham at a moment when all the gentlemen of the place were a.s.sembled, he had witnessed the whole a.s.sembly--no mob, but the collective good sense of the place--by one impulse standing bareheaded in his presence,--a tribute of disinterested homage which affected him powerfully, and which was well understood as offered to his foreign diplomacy. Under these circ.u.mstances could he bear to transfer or delegate the business of future negotiation?
Could he suffer to lapse into other hands, as a derelict, the consummation of that task which thus far he had so prosperously conducted? Was it in human nature to do so? He felt the same hectic of human pa.s.sion which Lord Nelson felt in the very gates of death, when some act of command was thoughtlessly suggested as belonging to his successor--"Not whilst I live, Hardy; not whilst I live." Yet, in Lord Londonderry"s case, it was necessary, if he would not transfer the trust, that he should rally his enegies instantly: for a new Congress was even then a.s.sembling. There was no delay open to him by the nature of the case: the call was --_now, now,_ just as you are, my lord, with those shattered nerves and that agitated brain, take charge of interests the most complex in Christendom: to say the truth, of interests which _are_ those of Christendom.
This struggle, between a nervous systm too grievously shaken, and the instant demand for energy seven times intensified, was too much for any generous nature. A ceremonial emba.s.sy might have been fulfilled by shattered nerves; but not this emba.s.sy. Anxiety supervening upon nervous derangement was bad; anxiety through responsibility was worse; but through a responsibility created by grateful confidence, it was an appeal through the very pangs of martyrdom. No brain could stand such a siege. Lord Londonderry"s gave way; and he fell with the tears of the generous, even where they might happen to differ from him in politics.
Meantime, this case, belonging to a cla.s.s generated by a London life, was in some quarters well understood even then; _now_, it is well known that, had different remedies been applied, or had the sufferer been able to stand up under his torture until the cycle of the symptoms had begun to come round, he might have been saved. The treatment is now well understood; but even then it was understood by some physicians; amongst others by that Dr. Willis who had attended George III. In several similar cases overpowering doses had been given of opium, or of brandy; and usually a day or two had carried off the oppression of the brain by a tremendous reaction.
In Birmingham and other towns, where the body of people called Quakers are acc.u.mulated, different forms of nervous derangement are developed; the secret principle of which turns not, as in these London cases, upon feelings too much called out by preternatural stimulation, but upon feelings too much repelled and driven in.
Morbid suppression of deep sensibilities must lead to states of disease equally terrific and perhaps even less tractable; not so sudden and critical perhaps, but more settled and gloomy. We speak not of any physical sensibilities, but of those which are purely moral--sensibilities to poetic emotions, to ambition, to social gaiety. Accordingly it is amongst the young men and women of this body that the most afflicting cases under this type occur. Even for children, however, the systematic repression of all ebullient feeling, under the Quaker discipline, must be sometimes perilous; and would be more so, were it not for that marvellous flexibility with which nature adapts herself to all changes--whether imposed by climate or by situation--by inflictions of Providence or by human spirit of system.
These cases we point to as formidable mementos, _monumenta sacra,_ of those sudden catastrophes which either ignorance of what concerns the health, or neglect in midst of knowledge, may produce. Any mode of life in London, or not in London, which trains the nerves to a state of permanent irritation, prepares a _nidus_ for disease; and unhappily not for chronic disease only, but for disease of that kind which finishes the struggle almost before it is begun. In such a state of habitual training for morbid action, it may happen--and often has happened--that one and the same week sees the victim apparently well and in his grave.
These, indeed, are extreme cases: though still such as threaten many more than they actually strike; for, though uncommon, they grow out of very common habits. But even the ordinary cases of unhealthy action in the system, are sufficient to account for perhaps three-fourths of all the disquiet and bad temper which disfigure daily life. Not one man in every ten is perfectly clear of some disorder, more or less, in the digestive system--not one man in fifty enjoys the absolutely normal state of that organ; and upon that depends the daily cheerfulness, in the first place, and through that (as well as by more direct actions) the sanity of the judgment. To speak strictly, not one man in a hundred is perfectly sane even as to his mind. For, though the greater disturbances of the mind do not take place in more than one man of each thousand,[Footnote: in several nations that has been found to be the average proportion of the insane. But this calculation has never been made to include all the slighter cases. It is not impossible that at some periods the whole human race may have been partially insane.] the slighter shades that settle on the judgment, which daily bring up thoughts such as a man would gladly banish, which force him into moods of feeling irritating at the moment, and wearing to the animal spirits,--these derangements are universal.
From the greater alike and the lesser, no man can free himself but in the proportion of his available knowledge applied to his own animal system, and of the surrounding circ.u.mstances, as constantly acting on that system. Would we, then, desire that every man should interrupt his proper studies or pursuits for the sake of studying medicine? Not at all: nor is that requisite. The laws of health are as simple as the elements of arithmetic or geometry. It is required only that a man should open his eyes to perceive the three great forces which support health.
They are these: 1. The _blood_ requires exercise: 2. The great central organ of the _stomach_ requires adaptation of diet: 3. The _nervous system_ requires regularity of sleep. In those three functions of sleep, diet, exercise, is contained the whole economy of health. All three of course act and react upon each other: and all three are wofully deranged by a London life--above all, by a parliamentary life. As to the first point, it is probable that any torpor, or even _lentor_ in the blood, such as scarcely expresses itself sensibly through the pulse, renders that fluid less able to resist the first actions of disease. As to the second, a more complex subject, luckily we benefit not by our own brief experience exclusively; every man benefits practically by the traditional experience of ages, which const.i.tutes the culinary experience in every land and every household. The inheritance of knowledge, which every generation receives, as to the salubrity of this or that article of diet, operates continually in preventing dishes from being brought to table. Each man"s separate experience does something to arm him against the temptation when it is offered; and again, the traditional experience far oftener intercepts the temptation. As to the third head, _sleep_, this of all is the most immediately fitted by nature to the relief of the brain and its exquisite machinery of nerves:--it is the function of health most attended to in our navy; and of all it is the one most painfully ravaged by a London life.
Thus it would appear, that the three great laws of health, viz., _motion_, _rest_, and _temperance_, (by a more adequate expression, _adaptation to the organ_,) are, in a certain gross way, taught to every man by his personal experience. The difficulty is--as in so many other cases--not for the understanding, but for the will--not to know, but to execute.
Now here steps in Casuistry with two tremendous suggestions, sufficient to alarm any thoughtful man, and rouse him more effectually to the performance of his duty.
First, that under the same law (whatever that law may be) which makes suicide a crime, must the neglect of health be a crime? For thus stand the two accounts:--By suicide you have cut off a _portion unknown_ from your life: years it may be, but possibly only days. By neglect of health you have cut off a _portion unknown_ from your life: days it may be, but also by possibility years. So the practical result may be the same in either case; or, possibly, the least is suicide. "Yes," you reply, "the _practical_ results--but not the purpose--not the intention--_ergo_, not the crime." Certainly not: in the one case the result arises from absolute predetermination, with the whole energies of the will; in the other it arises _in spite_ of your will, (meaning your choice)--it arises out of human infirmity. But still the difference is as between choosing a crime for its own sake, and falling into it from strong temptation.
Secondly, that in every case of duty unfulfilled, or duty imperfectly fulfilled, in consequence of illness, languor, decaying spirits, &c., there is a high probability (under the age of sixty-five almost a certainty) that a part of the obstacle is due to self-neglect.
No man that lives but loses some of his time from ill health, or at least from the incipient forms of ill health--bad spirits, or indisposition to exertion. Now, taking men even as they are, statistical societies have ascertained that, from the ages of twenty to sixty-five, ill health, such as to interrupt daily labor, averages from seven days to about fourteen per annum. In the best circ.u.mstances of climate, occupation, &c., one fifty-second part of the time perishes to the species--in the least favorable, two such parts. Consequently, in the forty-five years from twenty to sixty-five, not very far from a year perishes on an average to every man--to some as much more. A considerable part even of this loss is due to neglect or mismanagement of health. But this estimate records only the loss of time in a pecuniary sense; which loss, being powerfully restrained by self-interest, will be the least possible under the circ.u.mstances. The loss of energy, as applied to duties not connected with any self-interest, will be far more.
In so far as that loss emanates from defect of spirits, or other modes of vital torpor, such as neglect of health has either caused or promoted, and care might have prevented, in so far the omission is charged to our own responsibility. Many men fancy that the slight injuries done by each single act of intemperance, are like the glomeration of moonbeams upon moonbeams--myriads will not amount to a positive value. Perhaps they are wrong; possibly every act--nay, every separate pulse or throb of intemperate sensation--is numbered in our own after actions; reproduces itself in some future perplexity; comes back in some reversionary shape that injures the freedom of action for all men, and makes good men afflicted. At all events, it is an undeniable fact, that many a case of difficulty, which in apology for ourselves we very truly plead to be insurmountable by our existing energies, has borrowed its sting from previous acts or omissions of our own; it might _not_ have been insurmountable, had we better cherished our physical resources. For instance, of such a man it is said--he did not a.s.sist in repelling an injury from his friend or his native land. "True," says his apologist, "but you would not require him to do so when he labors under paralysis?"
"No, certainly; but, perhaps, he might _not_ have labored under paralysis had he uniformly taken care of his health."[Footnote: With respect to the management of health, although it is undoubtedly true that like the "primal charities," in the language of Wordsworth, in proportion to its importance it shines alike for all, and is diffused universally--yet not the less, in every age, some very obstinate prejudices have prevailed to darken the truth. Thus Dryden authorizes the conceit, that medicine can never be useful or requisite, because--
"G.o.d never made his work for man to mend."
To mend! No, glorious John, neither physician nor patient has any such presumptuous fancy; we take medicine to mend the injuries produced by our own folly. What the medicine mends is not G.o.d"s work, but our own. The medicine is a _plus_ certainly; but it is a _plus_ applied to a _minus_ of our own introducing.
Even in these days of practical knowledge, errors prevail on the subject of health which are neither trivial nor of narrow operation.
Universally, the true theory of digestion, as partially unfolded in Dr. Wilson Philip"s experiments on rabbits, is so far mistaken, and even inverted--that Lord Byron, when seeking a diet of easy digestion, instead of resorting to animal food broiled and underdone, which all medical men know to be the most digestible food, took to a vegetable diet, which requires a stomach of extra power. The same error is seen in the common notion about the breakfast of ladies in Elizabeth"s days, as if fit only for ploughmen; whereas it is _our_ breakfasts of slops which require the powerful organs of digestion. The same error, again, is current in the notion that a weak watery diet is fit for a weak person. Such a person peculiarly requires solid food. It is also a common mistake to suppose that, because no absolute illness is caused by daily errors of diet, these errors are practically cancelled. Cowper the poet delivers the very just opinion--that all disorders of a _function_ (as, suppose, the secretion of bile,) sooner or later, if not corrected, cease to be functional disorders, and become organic.]
Let not the reader suspect us of the Popish doctrine, that men are to enter hereafter into a separate reckoning for each separate act, or to stand at all upon their own merits. That reckoning, we Protestants believe, no man could stand; and that some other resource must be had than any personal merits of the individual. But still we should recollect that this doctrine, though providing a refuge for past offences, provides none for such offences as are committed deliberately, with a prospective view to the benefits of such a refuge. Offend we may, and we must: but then our offences must come out of mere infirmity--not because we calculate upon a large allowance being made to us, and say to ourselves, "_Let us take out our allowance._"
Casuistry, therefore, justly, and without infringing any truth of Christianity, urges the care of health as the basis of all moral action, because, in fact, of all _perfectly voluntary_ action.
Every impulse of bad health jars or untunes some string in the fine harp of human volition; and because a man cannot be a moral being but in the proportion of his free action, therefore it is clear that no man can be in a high sense moral, except in so far as through health he commands his bodily powers, and is not commanded by them.
CASE II.
LAWS OF HOSPITALITY IN COLLISION WITH CIVIC DUTIES.
Suppose the case, that taking shelter from a shower of rain in a stranger"s house, you discover proofs of a connection with smugglers.
Take this for one pole of such case, the trivial extreme; then for the other pole, the greater extreme, suppose the case, that, being hospitably entertained, and happening to pa.s.s the night in a stranger"s house, you are so unfortunate as to detect unquestionable proofs of some dreadful crime, say murder, perpetrated in past times by one of the family. The principle at issue is the same in both cases: viz., the command resting upon the conscience to forget private consideration and personal feelings in the presence of any solemn duty; yet merely the difference of degree, and not any at all in the kind of duty, would lead pretty generally to a separate practical decision for the several cases. In the last of the two, whatever might be the pain to a person"s feelings, he would feel himself to have no discretion or choice left. Reveal he must; not only, if otherwise revealed, he must come forward as a witness, but, if not revealed, he must denounce--he must lodge an information, and that instantly, else even in law, without question of morality, he makes himself a party to the crime--an accomplice after the act.
That single consideration would with most men at once cut short all deliberation. And yet even in such a situation, there is a possible variety of the case that might alter its complexion. If the crime had been committed many years before, and under circ.u.mstances which precluded all fear that the same temptation or the same provocation should arise again, most reflecting people would think it the better course to leave the criminal to his conscience. Often in such denunciations it is certain that human impertinence, and the spirit which sustains the habit of gossip, and mere incontinence of secrets, and vulgar craving for being the author of a sensation, have far more often led to the publication of the offence, than any concern for the interests of morality.
On the other hand, with respect to the slighter extreme--viz. in a case where the offence is entirely created by the law, with no natural turpitude about it and besides (which is a strong argument in the case) enjoying no special facilities of escaping justice--no man in the circ.u.mstances supposed would have a reason for hesitating.
The laws of hospitality are of everlasting obligation; they are equally binding on the host and on the guest. Coming under a man"s roof for one moment, in the clear character of guest, creates an absolute sanct.i.ty in the consequent relations which connect the parties. That is the popular feeling. The king in the old ballads is always represented as feeling that it would be d.a.m.nable to make a legal offence out of his own venison which he had eaten as a guest.
There is a cleaving pollution, like that of the Syrian leprosy, in the act of abusing your privileges as a guest, or in any way profiting by your opportunities as a guest to the injury of your confiding host. Henry VII. though a prince, was no gentleman; and in the famous case of his dining with Lord Oxford, and saying at his departure, with reference to an infraction of his recent statute, "My Lord, I thank you for my good cheer, but my attorney must speak with you;" Lord Oxford might have justly retorted, "If he does, then posterity will speak pretty plainly with your Majesty;" for it was in the character of Lord Oxford"s guest that he had learned the infraction of his law. Meantime, the general rule, and the _rationale_ of the rule, in such cases, appears to be this: Whenever there is, or can be imagined, a sanct.i.ty in the obligations on one side, and only a benefit of expediency in the obligations upon the other, the latter must give way. For the detection of smuggling, (the particular offence supposed in the case stated,) society has an express and separate machinery maintained. If their activity droops, that is the business of government. In such a case, government is ent.i.tled to no aid from private citizens; on the express understanding that no aid must be expected, has so expensive an establishment been submitted to. Each individual refuses to partic.i.p.ate in exposure of such offences, for the same reason that he refuses to keep the street clean even before his own door--he has already paid for having such work discharged by proxy.
CASE III.
GIVING CHARACTERS TO SERVANTS WHO HAVE MISCONDUCTED THEMSELVES.
No case so constantly arises to perplex the conscience in private life as this--which, in principle, is almost beyond solution.
Sometimes, indeed, the coa.r.s.e realities of law step in to cut that Gordian knot which no man can untie; for it is an actionable offence to give a character wilfully false. That little fact at once exorcises all aerial phantoms of the conscience. True: but this coa.r.s.e machinery applies only to those cases in which the servant has been guilty in a way amenable to law. In any case short of _that_, no plaintiff would choose to face the risks of an action; nor could he sustain it; the defendant would always have a sufficient resource in the vagueness and large lat.i.tude allowed to opinion when estimating the qualities of a servant. Almost universally, therefore, the case comes back to the forum of conscience. Now in that forum how stands the pleading? Too certainly, we will suppose, that the servant has not satisfied your reasonable expectations.
This truth you would have no difficulty in declaring; here, as much as anywhere else, you would feel it unworthy of your own integrity to equivocate--you open your writing-desk, and sit down to tell the mere truth in as few words as possible. But then steps in the consideration, that to do this without disguise or mitigation, is oftentimes to sign a warrant for the ruin of a fellow-creature--and that fellow-creature possibly penitent, in any case thrown upon your mercy. Who can stand this? In lower walks of life, it is true that mistresses often take servants without any certificate of character; but in higher grades this is notoriously uncommon, and in great cities dangerous. Besides, the candidate may happen to be a delicate girl, incapable of the hard labor incident to such a lower establishment. Here, then, is a case where conscience says into your left ear--_Fiat just.i.tia, ruat caelum_--"Do your duty without looking to consequences." Meantime, into the right ear conscience says, "But mark, in that case possibly you consign this poor girl to prost.i.tution." Lord Nelson, as is well known, was once placed in a dilemma equally trying;[Footnote: On the first expedition against Copenhagen, (in 1801.) He was unfortunately second in command; his princ.i.p.al, a brave man in person, wanted moral courage--he could not face responsibility in a trying shape.
And had he not been blessed with a disobedient second in command, he must have returned home _re infecta_.] on one side, an iron tongue sang out from the commander-in-chief--_retreat_; on the other, his own oracular heart sang to him--_advance_.
How he decided is well known; and the words in which he proclaimed his decision ought to be emblazoned for ever as the n.o.blest of all recorded repartees. Waiving his hand towards the Admiral"s ship, he said to his own officers, who reported the signal of recall--"You may see it; I cannot; you know I am blind on that side." Oh, venerable blindness! immortal blindness! None so deaf as those who will not hear; none so gloriously blind as those who will not see any danger or difficulty--who have a dark eye on that side, whilst they reserve another blazing like a meteor for honor and their country"s interest. Most of us, we presume, in the case stated about the servant, hear but the whispering voice of conscience as regards the truth, and her thundering voice as regards the poor girl"s interest. In doing this, however, we (and doubtless others) usually attempt to compromise the opposite suggestions of conscience by some such jesuitical device as this. We dwell pointedly upon those good qualities which the servant really possesses, and evade speaking of any others. But how, if minute, searching and circ.u.mstantial inquiries are made by way of letter? In that case, we affect to have noticed only such as we can answer with success, pa.s.sing the dangerous ones as so many rocks, _sub silentio_. All this is not quite right, you think, reader. Why, no; so think we; but what alternative is allowed? "Say, ye severest, what would ye have done?" In very truth, this is a dilemma for which Casuistry is not a match; unless, indeed, Casuistry as armed and equipped in the school of Ignatius Loyola. But that is with us reputed a piratical Casuistry. The whole estate of a servant lies in his capacity of serving; and often if you tell the truth, by one word you ruin this estate for ever. Meantime, a case very much of the same quality, and of even greater difficulty, is