“Apply your argument, Appadocca,” said Hamilton, “for I do not properly feel its force.”
“The application follows, naturally, my dear Charles,” replied Appadocca. “It is this: If I take away from the merchant whose property very likely consists of the accumulation of exorbitant and excessive profits, the sugar which by the vice of mortgages he wrings at a nominal price from the debt-ridden planter, who, in his turn, robs the unfortunate slave of his labour, I take what is ethically not his property, therefore, I commit no robbery. For, it is clear, he who wrenches away from the hands of another, that which the holder is not entitled to, does no wrong.”
“Hum,” groaned Hamilton, “nice distinction.”
“To myself I am unstained,” continued Appadocca, “notwithstanding the necessity that made me require the aid of expediency. No man can say that Emmanuel Appadocca ever fed his pirates with the lawful property of any one.”
A considerable pause ensued.
“But it strikes me, Emmanuel,” said Hamilton, resuming the conversation, “you forget, in your observations, that commerce, and the voyages which you seem to censure so much by implication, are the proper stimulants to civilization and human cultivation.”
“A very vulgar error, my dear Charles, and quite unworthy of your father’s son,” replied Appadocca. “The human mind does not require to be pioneered by Gog and Magog in order to improve. It is not in the busy mart, not at the tinkling of gold, that it grows and becomes strong; nor is it on the shaft of the steam-engine which propels your huge fabrics to rich though savage shores that it increases. No: there it degenerates and falls into the mere thing whose beginning is knack, whose end is knack. The mind can thrive only in the silence that courts contemplation. It was in such silence that among a race, which is now despised and oppressed, speculation took wing, and the mind burst forth, and, scorning things of earth, scaled the heavens, read the stars, and elaborated systems of philosophy, religion, and government: while the other parts of the world were either enveloped in darkness, or following in eager and uncontemplative haste the luring genii of riches. Commerce makes steam engines and money—it assists not the philosophical progress of the mind.”
“I cannot admire this strange and extraordinary theory, Emmanuel,” answered the young officer, evidently disposed to terminate this startling conversation.
“You may call it strange and extraordinary, if you please,” answered Appadocca; “but it is not the less true on account of its novelty: it is scarcely to be expected to commend itself to the world I know, because, forsooth, it is new and strange: although the systems and notions which are now as familiar as household terms, were, once upon a time, quite as new, strange, and extraordinary. Mankind is doomed to draw its venerative and uninquiring self along. Science cannot accelerate its unwilling movements. For my part, I shall cling to my own doctrine, and shall give an account of my actions to a Supreme Being, when the time arrives to do so.”