Pier. My friend, good-morrow!
How fares the honest partner of my heart?
What, melancholy! not a word to spare me?
Jaff. I'm thinking, Pierre, how that damned starving quality
Called honesty got footing in the world.
Pier. Why, powerful villany first set it up,
For its own ease and safety: honest men
Are the soft easy cushions on which knaves
Repose and fatten. Were all mankind villains,
They'd starve each other; lawyers would want practice,
Cut-throats rewards; each man would kill his brother
Himself, none would be paid or hanged for murder.
Honesty was a cheat invented first
To bind the hands of bold deserving rogues,
That fools and cowards might sit safe in power,
And lord it uncontrolled above their betters.
Jaff. Then honesty's but a notion?
Pier. Nothing else:
Like wit, much talked of, not to be defined,
He that pretends to most, too, has least share in't;
'Tis a ragged virtue: honesty! no more on't.
Jaff. Sure thou art honest?
Pier. So indeed men think me;
But they're mistaken, Jaffier: I am a rogue
As well as they;
A fine, gay, bold-faced villain, as thou seest me:
'Tis true, I pay my debts when they're contracted;
I steal from no man; would not cut a throat
To gain admission to a great man's purse,
Or a whore's bed; I'd not betray my friend,
To get his place or fortune: I scorn to flatter
A blown-up fool above, or crush the wretch
Beneath me.—
Yet, Jaffier, for all this, I am a villain.
Jaff. A villain!
Pier. Yes, a most notorious villain:
To see the sufferings of my fellow-creatures,
And own myself a man; to see our senators
Cheat the deluded people with a show
Of liberty, which yet they ne'er must taste of.
They say, by them our hands are free from fetters,
Yet whom they please they lay in basest bonds;
Bring whom they please to infamy and sorrow;
Drive us like wrecks down the rough tide of power,
Whilst no hold's left to save us from destruction:
All that bear this are villains, and I one,
Not to rouse up at the great call of nature,
And check the growth of these domestic spoilers,
That make us slaves, and tell us 'tis our charter.
Jaff. O Aquilina! friend, to lose such beauty,
The dearest purchase of thy noble labours!
She was thy right by conquest, as by love.