[A] The end does not justify the means: neither can a man or a woman do evil that good may come. But Oldcorne would contend that, in perfect Reason, Truth may be concealed, subject to certain limitations and, regard being had to person, time, and circumstance, the clue-affording possibilities; and this whether partial truth or whole truth, in pursuance of a prior and superior moral obligation. And so would say all modern diplomatists and commanders in the field, however conscientious and upright they might be, unless they wished to court defeat, or to give away their Country, and (if justice be meted out to them) to be cashiered. Now, unity at all times and in all places must prevail. For all men are subject to the one Moral Law of Right Reason, and nowhere will you find men without souls, notwithstanding that certain members of the English middle classes sometimes seem to labour under a delusion to the contrary.
Equivocation cannot be had recourse to in matters of Contract, nor for pecuniary gain, nor sordid profit. Remember that, O all ye worshippers of Mammon! For, “a more glorious doctrine for knaves and a more disastrous doctrine for honest men,” it would be difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of than equivocation, if it were not held strictly and severely in check and under control by the dictates of Intellectual Reason and Moral Justice. Now, this highly scientific liberty, “equivocation,” is never morally lawful to the witnesses in a Court of Justice, where the judge has jurisdiction to try the parties and the cause, whether those witnesses be the parties themselves to the cause, or strangers “subpœnaed” to give testimony therein. Such persons would be justly punishable for perjury who professed that, when bearing insufficient or inadequate witness in a Court of Justice by not telling “the whole” truth, they were merely “equivocating.” Nor can equivocation be had recourse to for working hurt or injury to a fellow-creature, whether bond or free, white, black, or copper-coloured, contrary to the primary obligations of Justice, which bid man render unto all men their due. Nor with reference to Divine Truth can equivocation be used. (Hence the piteous absurdity of the Royal Declaration against Popery.)
By the mild and merciful Law of England, a criminally-accused person may equivocate, on the same moral principles as justify strategy in warfare, until his guilt has been brought home to him by sufficient proofs. Such a person equivocates by pleading “not guilty.”
Because I believe the ethical doctrine which justifies equivocation, when properly taught, to be true and not false, and because I furthermore believe that, in the interests of my Country and of Humanity at large, it is of practical consequence, as well as mentally salutary, that a knowledge of equivocation, its foundation principles, extents, and limitations, should be “understanded” by all those that have the guardianship of the People, whether in the senate, in the field, or at sea, therefore, I have requested one, who has a competent mastery of the subject, to explain the matter to my readers. This has been kindly done in a letter, which will be found in Supplementum VI. For “Melius petere fontes,” the jurist as well as the poet has it. “Better is it to have recourse to the fountain-head.”
The philosophical explanation of the fact that, under the pressure of necessity, certain combatants can and do exhibit in action at the theatre of war the highest strategetical skill, in spite of their knowing nothing of the scientific doctrine of equivocation, springs from the law of reason that, as a rule, doing is the condition precedent to knowing; experience to cognition. See Ferrier’s “Institutes of Metaphysic” (Blackwood), p.15.
This was an obligation, that flowed from the truth expressed by the luminous maxim, “Qui prior est tempore potior est jure.” “He who is first in time is the stronger in point of right.”
The Jesuit could never that trust, that confidence betray. If needs be, he must be “true till death.” For it was not necessary that he should live. But it was necessary that he should live undishonoured.