“You have just hit it,” said he; and if Master Kara-ghuse was to take such liberties in France, Spain, Portugal, or Germany, all his wit and honesty would not save him from punishment. In England you do not want him; every man there is a Kara-ghuse, and every newspaper a puppet-shew.
“And yet,” returned I, “we complain sadly of want of liberty!”
“That is natural,” returned my sagacious Frenchman, “perfectly natural. Liberty is like money; the more we have of it, the more covetous we grow.”
“Very true, Monsieur,” said I, pleased with his compliment to our happy Constitution, and to clinch his observation, gave a Latin quotation, which when a child I got out of Lilly’s Grammar, “Crescit amor nummi, quantum ipsa pecunia crescit;” and then changing nummus for libertas, “Crescit amor libertatis, quantum ipsa libertas crescit.”
“’Tis very well, Monsieur,” said he; “and to carry on your allusion, may we not say, that they who do not know when they have enough, are as dangerously wrong in the one case, as those who say we have too much, are in the other? The English complaining of the want of liberty, reminds me of the coffee-house orator’s story of Cassem, who, wallowing in wealth, lost it all in the wild pursuit of more.—I hope however that they never will, like him, lose their stock in vain endeavours to increase it.”
LETTER XXXV.
While I was, in the manner I have already mentioned, endeavouring to pass away the time as cheerfully as possible, till a caravan was formed, or Company’s dispatches were coming over land, of which I might avail myself; I found my situation in the house of Mr. ——- growing extremely critical. That gentleman, of whose good sense, and truly excellent disposition, I had too manifold proofs to call them in question, had, though fallen into the vale of years, married his Lady at a very tender age. She was then young, beautiful, full of sensibility, and gifted with such natural endowments both of mind and person, accompanied with all those accomplishments which helped to dress them to advantage, that she might well be acquitted of vanity, even though fancy suggested to her she was fit to grace and confer happiness on a younger bed; while reflection on the obvious disparity of the match (which the cool temper of satiety possibly suggested to him) might perhaps have alarmed his mind to circumstances of probable danger, that, before wedlock, were all hid behind the deceptive veil of passion. Whether these were the private sentiments that influenced both or either of them, I cannot presume to determine, though I think it probable: for I was not long in the house till I plainly perceived they were on a very bad footing with each other, and in short that disagreement was become habitual to them. At first, that is to say, for a few days after my becoming an inmate of their house, decency enforced concealment, and the ebullitions of peevishness were stifled by the dictates of prudence: but the animosities of the connubial state are those which of all others are the most impatient under controul; and as time, by producing familiarity, relaxed restraint, the pent-up passions began to force their way, and open bikering, took place in my presence.
It is but barely doing justice to myself to say, that I felt the most poignant concern at seeing a couple, each so perfectly amiable in all other respects, blasting the hours that should be given to harmony and love, in jarring, reproach, and recrimination; and I would have given all I was worth that I had never had occasion to esteem them so much, or that I could give them that peace which seemed to have flown them for ever. Fain would I cast a veil over the whole transaction; fain would I bury it, even from myself, in oblivion: but it has been made by my enemies the subject of triumphant slander; and to do justice to myself, and disclaim the extent of guilt which they would impute to me, I am reluctantly obliged to avow the share I had, and declare how the matter really stood. I must speak the truth, and hope you will not conceive that I designedly lean too heavily upon any one, to ease myself of my share of the load.