Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348

by Various

I have not yet told you the story for the telling which I began this letter; and why I have kept it back I know not—it is not for the importance of it; for it is of a poor simple creature. But I must stay my hand from it again; for here has one passed before my window that can have no conscience. It is a great booby—six foot man-boy of about nineteen years. He has just stalked by with his insect-catcher on his shoulder; the fellow has been with his green net into the innocent fields, to catch butterflies and other poor insects. Many an hour have I seen you, Eusebius, with your head half-buried in the long blades of grass and pleasant field-weeds, partially edged by the slanting and pervading sunbeams, while the little stream has played its song of varied gentleness, watching the little insect world, and the golden beetles climbing up the long stalks, performing wondrous feats for your and their own amusement—for your delight was to participate in all their pleasures; and some would, with a familiarity that made you feel akin to all about you, walk over the page of the book you were reading, and look up, and pause, and trust their honest legs upon your hand, confiding that there was one human creature that would not hurt them. Think of those hours, my gentle friend, and consider the object for which that wretch of a booby is out. How many of your playmates has he stuck through with pins, upon which they are now writhing! And when the wretch goes home murder-laden, his parents or guardians will greet him as a most amiable and sweet youth, who wouldn’t for the world misspend his time as other boys do, but is ever on the search after knowledge; and so they swagger and boast of his love of entomology. I’d rather my children should grow up like cucumbers—more to belly than head—than have these scientific curiosity-noddles upon their poles of bodies, that haven’t room for hearts, and look cold and cruel, like the pins they stick through the poor moths and butterflies, and all innocent insects. Good would it be to hear you lecture the parents of these heartless bodies for their bringing up, and picture, in your eloquent manner, the torments that devils may be doomed to inflict in the other world on the cruel in this; and to fix them writhing upon their forks as they pin the poor insects. What would they do but call you a wicked blasphemer, and prate about the merciful goodness of their Maker, as if one Maker did not make all creatures? Yet what do such as they know of mercy but the name? These are they that kill conscience in the bud.

Men’s bosoms are like their dwellings—mansions, magnificent and gorgeous—full of all noble and generous thoughts, with room to expand—or dwellings of pretensions, show, and meanness—or hovels of all dirt and slovenliness; yet is there scarcely one in which conscience does not walk in and out boldly, or steal in cautiously, though she may not always have room to move her arms about her, and assert her presence. Yet even when circumscribed by narrowness, and immured in all unseemly things, will she patiently watch her time for some appropriate touch, or some quiet sound of her voice. Her most difficult scene of action, however, is in the bosom of pretension; for there the trumpet of self-praise is ever sounding to overwhelm her voice, and she is kept at arm’s-length from the touch of the guilty hearts, by the padding and the furniture that surround them. But oh! the hypocrites of this life—they almost make one weary of it; they who walk with their hands as if ever weighing, by invisible scales, with their scruples of conscience their every thought, word, and action. Shall I portray the disgusting effigies of one? “Niger est—hunc tu, Romane, caveto.” I will, however, tell you somewhat of one that has lately come across my path, and I will call him Peter Pure; for he is one of those that, though assuming a quietness, is really rabid in politics, and has ever upon his lips “purity of election,” and the like cant words. A few years ago his circumstances not being very flourishing, he got the ear of our generous friend of the Grange; through his timely assistance, and a pretty considerable loan, he overcame his difficulties, and is now pretty well to do. At the last contest for the borough, our friend T. of the Grange, with others, waited upon Peter Pure; and Peter, with large professions of gratitude—as how could he do less for so kind a benefactor?—unhesitatingly promised his vote. At this time, be it observed, there was not the slightest appearance of the contest which afterwards came, and with that storm a pretty good shower of bribery. What quantity of this shower fell to Peter Pure’s share, was never discovered; but it is easy to conjecture that so nice, so grateful a conscience was not overcome for nothing. Peter never liked cheap sins. The contest came, the election takes place, and Peter Pure’s plumper weighs down the adversary’s scale. Soon after this he had the impudence to accost his benefactor thus:—“My dear friend and benefactor, and worthy sir, I wished for this opportunity of explaining to you, with the utmost sincerity and confidence, what may have appeared to you like—yes—really like a breaking of my word. It is true I did promise you my vote: but then, you know, voting being a very serious matter, I thought it necessary to read my oath which I should be called upon to take; and I found, my good friend, to my astonishment, that I was bound by it not to vote from ‘favour and affection.’ Yes, those are the words. Now, it unfortunately—only unfortunately in this instance, mind me—happens, that there is not a man in the world so much in my affection and my favour as yourself; to vote, therefore, as you had wished me to vote, would, after reading the oath, have been downright perjury; for I certainly should have voted ‘through favour and affection.’ That would have been a fearful weight upon my conscience.” Here was a pretty scoundrel, Eusebius. I should be sorry to have you encounter him in a crowd, and trust his sides to your elbows, lest you should be taken with one of those sudden fits of juvenility that are not quite in accordance with the sedateness of your years. You will not be inclined to agree with an apologist I met the other day, who simply said that Satan had thrown the temptation in his way. There is no occasion for such superfluous labour, nor does the arch-fiend throw any of his labour away. Your Peter Pures may be very well left to themselves, and are left to themselves; their own inventions are quite sufficient for all their trading purposes; there is no need to put temptations in their way—they will seek them of themselves.

You will certainly lay me under the censure that Montaigne throws upon Guicciardini. Let me then make amends, and ascribe one action to a generous, a conscientious motive. There cannot be found a better example than I have met with in reading some memoirs of the great and good Colston, the founder of those excellent charities in London, Bristol, and elsewhere. I find this passage in his life. It happened that one of his most richly-laden vessels was so long missing, and the violent storms having given every reason to suppose she had perished, that Colston gave her up for lost. Upon this occasion, it is said, he did not lament his unhappiness as many are apt to do, and perpetually count up the serious amount of his losses; but, with dutiful submission, fell upon his knees, and with thankfulness for what Providence had been pleased to leave him, and with the utmost resignation relinquished even the smallest hope of her recovery. When, therefore, his people came soon afterwards to tell him that his ship had safely come to port, he did not show the signs of self-gratulation which his friends expected to see. He was devoutly thankful for the preservation of the lives of so many seamen; but as for the vessel and her cargo, they were no longer his—he had resigned them—he could not in conscience take them back. He looked upon all as the gift of Providence to the poor; and, as such, he sold the ship and merchandize—and most valuable they were—and, praying for a right guidance, distributed the proceeds among the poor. How beautiful is such charity! Here is no false lustre thrown upon the riches and goods of this world, that, reflected, blind the eyes that they see not aright. The conscience of such a man as Colston was an arbiter even against himself, sat within him in judgment to put aside his worldly interest, and made a steady light for itself to see by, where naturally was either a glare or an obscurity, that alike might bewilder less honest vision.

Some such idea is gloriously thus expressed by Sir Thomas Browne in his admirable Religio Medici.[A] “Conscience only, that can see without light, sits in the areopagy and dark tribunal of our hearts, surveys our thoughts, and condemns our obliquities. Happy is that state of vision that can see without light, though all should look as before the creation, when there was not an eye to see, or light to actuate a vision—wherein, notwithstanding, obscurity is only imaginable respectively unto eyes. For unto God there was none. Eternal light was for ever—created light was for the creation, not himself; and as He saw before the sun, He may still also see without it.”

A case of conscience came to be discussed not long since, in which I took a part. We had been speaking of the beauty of truth, and that nothing could justify the slightest deviation from the plain letter of it. This was doubted; and the case supposed was, that of a ruffian or a madman pursuing an innocent person with intent to murder. You see the flight and pursuit; the pursuer is at fault, and questions you as to the way taken by the fugitive. Are you justified in deceiving the pursuer by a false direction of the way his intended victim had taken? Are you to say the person went to the right, when the way taken was the left? The advocate for the downright truth maintained that you were not to deceive—though you felt quite sure that by your telling the truth, or by your silence altogether, immediate murder would ensue. The advocate declared, that without a moment’s hesitation he should act upon his decision. He would have done no such thing. People are better than their creeds, and, it should seem, sometimes better than their principles. In which case would his conscience prick him most, when the heat was over—as accessory to the murder or as the utterer of untruth? I cannot but think it a case of instinct, which, acting before conscience, pro hac vice supersedes it. The matter is altogether and at once, by an irresistible decree, taken out of the secondary “Court of Conscience” and put into the primary “Court of Nature.”

Truth, truth! well may Bacon speak of it thus—“‘What is truth?’ said laughing Pilate, and wouldn’t wait for an answer.” If there be danger in the deviation shown in the case stated, what a state are we all in? All, as we do daily in some way or other, putting our best legs foremost. Look at the whole advertising, puffing, quacking, world—the flattering, the soothing, the complimenting. Virtues and vices alike driving us more or less out of the straight line; and, blindfolded by habit, we know not that we are walking circuitously. And they are not the worst among us, perhaps, who walk so deviatingly—seeing, knowing—those that stammer out nightly ere they rest, in confession, their fears that they have been acting if not speaking the untrue thing, and praying for strength in their infirmity, and more simplicity of heart; and would in their penitence shun the concourse that besets them, and hide their heads in some retired quiet spot of peace, out of reach of this assault of temptation. And this, Eusebius, is the best prelude I can devise to the story I have to tell you. It is of a poor old woman; shall I magnify her offence? It was magnified indeed in her eyes. Smaller, therefore, shall it be—because of its very largeness to her. But it will not do to soften offences, Eusebius. I see already you are determined to do so. I will call it her crime. Yes, she lived a life of daily untruth. She wrote it, she put her name to it—“litera scripta manet.” We must not mince the matter; she spoke it, she acted it hourly, she took payment for it—it was her food, her raiment. Oh! all you that love to stamp the foot at poor human nature, here is an object for your contempt, your sarcasm, your abuse, your punishment; drag her away by the hair of her head. But stay, take care you do not “strain at a gnat and swallow a camel;” examine yourselves a little first. She has confessed, perhaps you have not. Remember, no one knew it; no one guessed it. It is she herself has lifted up the lantern into the dark recesses of her own heart; or rather, it is true religion in her hath done it: and dark though it was there, you ought to see clearly enough that her heart is not now the den wherein falsehood and hypocrisy lurk; search well—you see none. She has made a “clean breast of it,” and you had better do the same, and drop the stone you were about to fling so mercilessly at her dying head. Are you out of patience, Eusebius? and cry—Out with it, what did she do? You shall hear; ’tis but a simple anecdote after all. I have learned it from a parish priest. He was sent for to attend the deathbed of poor old village dame, or schoolmistress. She had a sin to confess; she could not die in peace till she had confessed it. With broken speech, she sobbed, and hesitated, and sobbed again.

“I—I—I,” she stammered out, and hid her face again. “There, I must, I must tell it; and may I be forgiven! You know, sir, I have kept school forty years—yes, forty years—a poor sinful creature—I—I”——

“My good woman,” said the parish priest, “take comfort; it will be pardoned if you are thus penitent. I hope it is not a very great sin.”

“Oh yes!” said she, “and pray call me not good woman. I am—not—good;” sobbing, “alas, alas!—there, I—will out with it! I put down that I taught grammar—and (sobbing) I, I, did not know it myself.”

Eusebius, Eusebius, had you been there, you would have embraced the old dame. The father of lies was not near her pillow. This little sin, she had put it foremost, and, like the little figure before many nothings, she had made a million of it; and one word, nay one thought, before confession was uttered, had breathed upon and obliterated the whole amount. Where will you see so great truth? And this, you will agree with me, was a case of Tender Conscience.