CHAPTER XIX.
“Methinks, if, as I guess, the fault’s but small,
It might be pardoned.”
The Orphan.
Perhaps no surer test of high principles, as it is certain no more accurate test of high breeding can be found, than a distaste for injurious gossip. In woman, subject as she is unquestionably by her education, habits, and active curiosity, to the influence of this vice, its existence is deplorable, leading to a thousand wrongs, among the chief of which is a false appreciation of ourselves; but, when men submit to so vile a propensity, they become contemptible, as well as wicked. As a result of long observation, we should say that those who are most obnoxious to the just condemnation of the world, are the most addicted to finding faults in others; and it is only the comparatively good, who are so because they are humble, that abstain from meddling and dealing in scandal.
When one reflects on the great amount of injustice that is thus inflicted, without even the most remote hope of reparation, how far a loose, ill-considered and ignorant remark will float on the tongues of the idle, how much unmerited misery is oftentimes entailed by such unweighed assertions and opinions, and how small is the return of benefit in any form whatever, it would almost appear a necessary moral consequence that the world, by general consent, would determine to eradicate so pernicious an evil, in the common interest of mankind. That it does not, is probably owing to the power that is still left in the hands of the Father of Sin, by the Infinite Wisdom that has seen fit to place us in this condition of trial. The parent of all lies, gossip, is one of the most familiar of the means he employs to put his falsehoods in circulation.
This vice is heartless and dangerous when confined to its natural limits, the circles of society; but, when it invades the outer walks of life, and, most of all, when it gets mixed up with the administration of justice, it becomes a tyrant as ruthless and injurious in its way, as he who fiddled while Rome was in flames. We have no desire to exaggerate the evils of the state of society in which we live; but an honest regard to truth will, we think, induce every observant man to lament the manner in which this power, under the guise of popular opinion, penetrates into all the avenues of the courts, corrupting, perverting, and often destroying, the healthful action of their systems.
Biberry furnished a clear example of the truth of these remarks on the morning of the day on which Mary Monson was to be tried. The gaol-window had its crowd of course; and though the disposition of curtains, and other similar means of concealment, completely baffled vulgar curiosity, they could not cloak the resentful feelings to which this reserve gave birth. Most of those who were drawn thither belonged to a class who fancied it was not affliction enough to be accused of two of the highest crimes known to the laws; but that to this grievous misfortune should be added a submission to the stare of the multitude. It was the people’s laws the accused was supposed to have disregarded; and it was their privilege to anticipate punishment, by insult.
“Why don’t she show herself, and let the public look on her?” demanded one curious old man, whose head had whitened under a steadily increasing misconception of what the rights of this public were. “I’ve seen murderers afore now, and ain’t a bit afeard on ’em, if they be well ironed and look’d a’ter.”