CHAP. 9.]

POLITICAL AGENCY.

171

and yet perhaps the evil of the latter case is incomparably greater than that of the former.

agency

POLITICAL AFFAIRS. The amount of immoral which is prac tised in these affairs is very great. Look to any of the continental governments, or to any that have subsisted there: how few acts of misrule, of oppression, of injustice, and of crime have been prevented by the want of agents of the iniquity! I speak not of notoriously bad men: of these, bad governors can usually find enough: but I speak of men who pretend to respectability and virtue of character, and who are actually called respectable by the world. There is perhaps no class of affairs in which the agency of others is more indispensable to the accomplishment of a vicious act than in the political. Very little-comparatively very little of oppression and of the political vices of rulers should we see, if reputable men did not lend their agency. These evils could not be committed through the agency of merely bad men; because the very fact that bad men only would abet them, would frequently preclude the possibility of their commission. It is not to be pretended that no public men possess or have possessed sufficient virtue to refuse to be the agents of a vicious government, but they are few. If they were numerous, especially if they were as numerous as they ought to be, history, even very modern history, would have had a far other record to frame than that which now devolves to her. Can it be needful to argue upon such things? Can it be needful to prove that neither the commands of ministers, nor "systems of policy," nor any other circumstance, exempts a public man from the obligations of the moral law? Public men often act as if they thought that to be a public man was to be brought under the jurisdiction of a new and a relaxed morality. They often act as if they thought that not to be the prime mover in political misdeeds was to be exempt from all moral responsibility for those deeds. A dagger, if it could think, would think it was not responsible for the assassination of which it was the agent. A public man may be a political dagger, but he cannot, like the dagger, be irresponsible.

These illustrations of Immoral Agency, and of the obligation to avoid it, might be multiplied, if enough had not been offered to make our sentiments, and the reasons upon which they are founded, obvious to the reader. Undoubtedly, in the present state of society, it is no easy task, upon these subjects, to wash our hands in innocency. But if we cannot avoid all agency, direct or indirect, in evil things, we can avoid much; and it will be sufficiently early to complain of the difficulty of complete purity, when we have dismissed from our conduct as much impurity as

we can.

172

PUBLIC NOTIONS OF MORALITY.

[ESSAY IL

CHAPTER X.

THE INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUALS UPON PUBLIC NOTIONS OF MORALITY.

*

THAT the influence of public opinion upon the practice of virtue is very great needs no proof. Of this influence the reader has seen some remarkable illustrations in the discussion of the efficacy of oaths in binding to veracity. There is indeed almost no action and no institution which public opinion does not affect. In moral affairs it makes men call one mode of human destruction murderous and one honourable; it makes the same action abominable in one individual and venial in another: in public institutions, from a village workhouse to the constitution of a state, it is powerful alike for evil or for good. If it be misdirected it will strengthen and perpetuate corruption and abuse; if it be directed aright, it will eventually remove corruptions and correct abuses, with a power which no power can withstand.

In proportion to the greatness of its power is the necessity of rectifying public opinion itself. To contribute to its rectitude is to exercise exalted philanthropy,-to contribute to its incorrectness is to spread wickedness and misery in the world. The purpose of the present chapter is to remark upon some of those subjects on which the public opinion appears to be inaccurate, and upon the consequent obligation upon individuals not to perpetuate that inaccuracy and its attendant evils by their conduct or their language. Of the positive part of the obligation,that which respects the active correction of common opinions,-little will be said. He who does not promote the evil can scarcely fail of promoting the good. A man often must deliver his sentiments respecting the principles and actions of others; and if he delivers them so as not to encourage what is wrong, he will practically encourage what is right.

It might have been presumed, of a people who assent to the authority of the moral law, that their notions of the merit or turpitude of actions would have been conformable with the doctrines which that law delivers. Far other is the fact. The estimates of the moral law and of public opinion are discordant to excess. Men have practised a sort of transposition with the moral precepts, and have assigned to them arbitrary and capricious, and therefore new and mischievous, stations on the moral scale. The order both of the vices and the virtues is greatly deranged.

Suppose, with respect to vices, the highest degree of reprobation in the moral law to be indicated by 20, and to descend by units as the reprobation became less severe, and suppose in the same manner we put 20 for the highest offence according to popular opinion, and diminish the number as it accounts less of the offence, we should probably be presented with some such graduation as this::

* Essay ii. chap. 7.

We might make a similar statement of the virtues. This indeed is inevitable in the case of those virtues which are the opposites of some of these vices. Respecting others we may say—

How, it may reasonably be asked, do these strange incongruities arise? First, men practise a sort of voluntary deception on themselves: they persuade themselves to think that an offence which they desire to commit is not so vicious as the moral law indicates, or as others to which they have little temptation. They persuade themselves, again, that a virtue which is easily practised is of great worth, because they thus flatter themselves with complacent notions of their excellences at a cheap rate. Virtues which are difficult they for the same reason depreciate. This is the dictate of interest. It is manifestly good policy to think lightly of the value of a quality which we do not choose to be at the cost of possessing; and who would willingly think there was much evil in a vice which he practised every day? That which a man thus persuades himself to think a trivial vice or an unimportant virtue, he of course speaks of as such among his neighbours. They perhaps are as much interested in propagating the delusion as he: they listen with willing ears, and cherish and proclaim the grateful falsehood. By these and by other means the public notions become influenced; a long continuance of the general chicanery at length actually confounds the public opinion; and when once an opinion has become a public opinion, there is no difficulty in accounting for the perpetuation of the fallacy.

If sometimes the mind of an individual recurs to the purer standard, a multitude of obstacles present themselves to its practical adoption. He hopes that under the present circumstances of society an exact obedience to the moral law is not required; he tries to think that the notions of a kingdom or a continent cannot be so erroneous: and at any rate trusts that as he deviates with millions, millions will hardly be held guilty at the bar of God.-The misdirection of public opinion is an obstacle to the virtue even of good men. He who looks beyond the notions of others, and founds his moral principles upon the moral law, yet feels that it is more difficult to conform to that law when he is discountenanced by the general notions, than if those notions supported and encouraged him. What then must the effect of such misdirection be

174

PUBLIC NOTIONS OF DUELLING

[ESSAY 11. upon those to whom acceptance in the world is the principal concern, and who, if others applaud or smile, seem to be indifferent whether their own hearts condemn them?

Now, with a participation in the evils which the misdirection of public opinion occasions every one is chargeable who speaks of moral actions according to a standard that varies from that which Christianity has exhibited. Here is the cause of the evil, and here must be its remedy. "It is an important maxim in morals, as well as in education, to call things by their right names."* "To bestow good names on bad things is to give them a passport in the world under a delusive disguise."t "The soft names and plausible colours under which deceit, sensuality, and revenge are presented to us in common discourse, weaken by degrees our natural sense of the distinction between good and evil." Public notions of morality constitute a sort of line of demarkation which is regarded by most men in their practice as a boundary between right and wrong. He who contributes to fix this boundary in the wrong place, who places evil on the side of virtue, or goodness on the side of vice, offends more deeply against the morality and the welfare of the world than multitudes who are punished by the arm of law. If moral offences are to be estimated by their consequences, few will be found so deep as that of habitually giving good names to bad things. It is well indeed for the responsibility of individuals that their contribution to the aggregate mischief is commonly small. Yet every man should remember that it is by the contribution of individuals that the aggregate is formed; and that it can only be by the deductions of individuals that it will be done away.

DUELLING. If two boys who disagreed about a game of marbles or a penny tart should therefore walk out by the river side, quietly take off their clothes, and when they had got into the water, each try to keep the other's head down until one of them was drowned, we should doubtless think that these two boys were mad. If when the survivor returned to his schoolfellows, they patted him on the shoulder, told him he was a spirited fellow, and that if he had not tried the feat in the water, they would never have played at marbles or any other game with him again, we should doubtless think that these boys were infected with a most revolting and disgusting depravity and ferociousness. We should instantly exert ourselves to correct their principles, and should feel assured that nothing could ever induce us to tolerate, much less to encourage, such abandoned depravity.-And yet we do both tolerate and encourage such depravity every day. Change the penny tart for some other trifle; instead of boys put men, and instead of a river a pistol, and we encourage it all. We virtually pat the survivor's shoulder, tell him he is a man of honour, and that if he had not shot at his acquaintance, we would never have dined with him again. "Revolting and disgusting depravity"

* Rees's Encyclop. Art. Philos. Moral. + Knox's Essays, No. 34.

Blair, Serm. 9.

Dr. Carpenter insists upon similar truths, upon somewhat different subjects. “If children hear us express as much approbation, and in the same terms, of the skill of a gentleman coachdriver, of the abilities of a philosophical lecturer, and of an individual who has just performed an elevated act of disinterested virtue, is it possible that they should not feel great confusion of ideas? If each is termed a noble fellow, and with the same emphasis and animation, how can the youthful understanding calculate with sufficient accuracy so as to appreciate the im port of the expression in the same way that we should do?"-Principles of Education" Con

science."

СНАР. 10.]

DUELLING.

175

are at once excluded from our vocabulary. We substitute such phrases as "the course which a gentleman is obliged to pursue,"-"it was necessary to his honour,"" one could not have associated with him if he had not fought." We are the schoolboys, grown up; and by the absurdity, and more than absurdity, of our phrases and actions, shooting or drowning (it matters not which) becomes the practice of the national school.

It is not a trifling question that a man puts to himself when he asks, What is the amount of my contribution to this detestable practice? It is by individual contributions to the public notions respecting it that the practice is kept up. Men do not fire at one another because they are fond of risking their own lives or other men's, but because public notions are such as they are. Nor do I think any deduction can be more manifestly just than that he who contributes to the misdirection of these notions is responsible for a share of the evil and the guilt.-When some offence has given probability to a duel, every man acts immorally who evinces any disposition to coolness with either party until he has resolved to fight; and if eventually one of them falls, he is a party to his destruction. Every word of unfriendliness, every look of indifference, is positive guilt; for it is such words and such looks that drive men to their pistols. It is the same after a victim has fallen. "I pity his family, but they have the consolation of knowing that he vindicated his honour," is equivalent to urging another and another to fight. Every heedless gossip who asks, "Have you heard of this affair of honour?" and every reporter of news who relates it as a proper and necessary procedure, participates in the general crime.

If they who hear of an intended meeting among their friends hasten to manifest that they will continue their intercourse with the parties though they do not fight,-if none talks of vindicating honour by demanding satisfaction,-if he who speaks and he who writes of this atrocity, speaks and writes as reason and morals dictate, duelling will soon disappear from the world. To contribute to the suppression of the custom is therefore easy, and let no man, and let no woman, who does not, as occasion offers, express reprobation of the custom, think that their hands are clear of blood. They especially are responsible for its continuance whose station or general character gives peculiar influence to their opinions in its favour. What then are we to think of the conduct of a British judge who encourages it from the bench? A short time ago a person was tried on the Perth circuit for murder, having killed another in a duel. The evidence of the fact was undisputed. Before the verdict was pronounced the judge is said to have used these words in his address to the jury : "The character you have heard testified by so many respectable and intelligent gentlemen this day is as high as is possible for man to receive, and I consider that throughout this affair the panel has acted up to it." So that it is laid down from the bench that the man who shoots another through the heart for striking him with an umbrella acts up to the highest possible character of man! The prisoner, although every one knew he had killed the deceased, was acquitted; and the judge is reported to have addressed him thus: "You must be aware that the only duty I have to perform is to dismiss you from that bar with a character unsullied."* If the judge's language be true, Christianity is an idle fiction. Who will wonder at the continuance of duelling-who will wonder that upon this

• The trial is reported in the Caledonian Mercury of Sept. 25, 1826.