There is no physical crime at this day, so far beyond pardon,—so without parallel in its untempted guilt, as the making of war-machinery, and invention of mischievous substance. Two nations may go mad, and fight like harlots—God have mercy on them;—you, who hand them carving-knives off the table, for leave to pick up a dropped sixpence, what mercy is there for you? We are so humane, forsooth, and so wise; and our ancestors had tar-barrels for witches; we will have them for everybody else, and drive the witches’ trade ourselves, by daylight; we will have our cauldrons, please Hecate, cooled (according to the Darwinian theory,) with baboon’s blood, and enough of it, and sell hell-fire in the open street.
II. Seek to revenge no injury. You see now—do not you—a little more clearly why I wrote that? what strain there is on the untaught masses of you to revenge themselves, even with insane fire?
Alas, the Taught masses are strained enough also;—have you not just seen a great religious and reformed nation, with its goodly Captains,—philosophical, sentimental, domestic, evangelical-angelical-minded altogether, and with its Lord’s Prayer really quite vital to it,—come and take its neighbour nation by the throat, saying, “Pay me that thou owest”?
Seek to revenge no injury: I do not say, seek to punish no crime: look what I hinted about failed bankers. Of that hereafter.
III. Learn to obey good laws; and in a little while you will reach the better learning—how to obey good Men, who are living, breathing, unblinded law; and to subdue base and disloyal ones, recognizing in these the light, and ruling over those in the power, of the Lord of Light and Peace, whose Dominion is an everlasting Dominion, and His Kingdom from generation to generation.
Ever faithfully yours,
[1] I spare you, for once, a word for ‘government’ used by this old author, which would have been unintelligible to you, and is so, except in its general sense, to me, too. [↑]