“Why then conceal your name?”
“Simply because it had nothing to do with the business, our errand being merely exploratory; and it might have altered the terms in a way injurious to your husband. Now that our errand is done, let them follow us and see who we are, if they like.”
“But the errand itself!”
“Is anything but a pleasant one, certainly; but my conscience is at ease as to my share of it. We keep the letter of the statute, you know, and that is enough. No one is bound to keep the spirit of a bad law, since evasion is the only means of bringing on its repeal. As for the usury laws,—they have been repeatedly condemned by committees of the legislature; and the more they are evaded, the better is the chance of getting rid of them. Do not you see this? Do not you see that perpetual evasion of any law is a sufficient proof of its badness?”
“You have such courage!” exclaimed Maria. “All I wish for is to get through life as quietly as I can, and bring up my children to do the same.”
“Beware of teaching them blind obedience, Maria,” said Letitia, when once more seated in the carriage; “your girls equally with your son. Obedience, by all means; but a rational, discriminating, and therefore loving and hearty obedience to the public laws as well as to those of your own house. Your little ones will learn hereafter that your object in forbidding them to set foot on the hearth-rug in your absence, is to guard them from being burned. Let them learn at the same future time the purposes of the laws under which they live, that they may be ready to do their part in that renovation of the system which is required as years roll on. If you would not have your children retain a superstitious dread of a hearth-rug through life, neither would you have them cling to laws enacted in the infancy of the state, and inappropriate to its present condition.”
“Implicit obedience is at least safe,” observed Maria.
“Safe to a certain point, but no farther. If you continue the law of the hearth-rug for twenty years to come, your obedient children will never be burned by crossing it; but do you suppose they will not by that time have discovered other means of getting the warmth they wish for? They will creep under it; they will creep round it; they will jump over it. So is it, and so should it be with absurd, antiquated laws.”
“Who is to judge which are absurd and which sound?”
“The bulk of the subjects of them. A sound law can never be evaded by more than a solitary simpleton here and there, against whom society will rise up; since it is the paramount interest of society to keep good laws in effectual operation. When the time comes for the bulk of society to approve and enforce the usury laws, you and I will pay no more visits to Mr. Simeon. Till then, or till their repeal, let there be opposition to the spirit and grudging obedience to the letter, unless we are prepared for the consequences of a breach of both.”