“No, no: ’tis all men’s office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow
But no man’s virtue nor sufficiency
To be so moral when he shall indure
The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel
My griefs cry louder than advertisement.”
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
The next night, about the same hour, Charles Hamilton again betook
himself to the cabin-prison of Appadocca, who resumed his narrative as he
had promised.
“When I arrived at Jamaica, I proceeded at once,” he continued, “to San
Domingo, where I knew there were many at that time to whom the world was
as disgusting as it was to myself, and who, I judged, would be the proper
instruments to aid me in my schemes. The French revolution had torn up
whole families together, from the soil on which they had been rooted for
generations, and had driven them to distant countries for protection and
subsistence. They had carried with them, to their new homes, a strong
hatred for their then democratic country, in particular, and for the
whole world in general. For suffering tends not to soften the feelings
or expand the heart. Pain, either mental or bodily, sours the sweetest
nature, and it requires the strongest fortitude to endure it without
anger.—Even Zeno strangled himself when he had known pain.
“Among such men only who hated the world from having, like myself,
experienced injustice, I thought I could live. When I arrived at San
Domingo, I found that even my anticipations were exceeded. I found the
exiles existing in a state of cynical philosophy, in the midst of the
virgin forests that covered the island. They lived in rude huts, erected
apart from each other, which they called boucans. There they passed their
lives in the society only of their dogs, and of their apprentices or
servants, that jointly aided them in the chase by which they subsisted.
“The instinct of active pleasure seemed entirely eradicated from their
hearts; for after the day’s work was done, and they had killed the
animal which promised them food for a few days, they usually stretched
themselves on their bed of reeds, and sullenly smoked away their waking
hours.
“This life was so congenial to one who had suffered much, that I
should have settled myself with the others, amidst the solitude of the
wilderness, and would have there prosecuted the studies with which my
existence was so strongly wrapped, if I had not a vow to fulfil.
“How seductive soever I thought those boucans to be, I was obliged to
abandon the idea of enjoying the calm quiet, which they promised, and to
form a scheme to carry into effect the resolution which I had taken.
“I was not long in San Domingo, before I met some of my fellow students
of the French University, who, as belonging to the old aristocracy, were
banished from France. I found them disgusted with the arduous life which
they were obliged to lead, and fretting over the destiny which had,
with so little justice, deprived them of so much at home, to allow them
so little in their new country. I availed myself of their impatience,
and proposed to them a life which was by far less monotonous than that
which they then followed, and which, beside, was attended with greater
gain—to say nothing of the opportunity which it would afford of avenging
themselves on men, and not on harmless brutes. They received my proposal
with acclamation.
“On the spur of the moment we procured a vessel. I was elected captain,
and we went in search of adventures on the high seas. I led my followers
on wrecklessly in action, and at other times, I kept them under an iron
discipline. The success of my enterprizes gave greater weight to my
position, to which I had been elevated, only from a great respect with
which it seemed they regarded my character. I was consequently enabled
to develope my original plan more and more. The time at last arrived—I
sailed to Trinidad.
“By going ashore in disguise, and by a variety of other means, I learnt
that my father was about to take passage in a ship for England. I
watched the sailing of the vessel, and captured her some days after her
departure. Then I effected that which I had designed, and attempted
to make him undergo the same miseries, to which he had subjected me.
Chance, however, seems to have rescued him; and, as you see, through his
instrumentality I am now a prisoner.”
“And I hope, Emmanuel,” said the young officer, “you will now consider
your vow as performed, and will cease to follow up this course of
unnatural enmity to him who gave you life.”
“Cease!” exclaimed Appadocca, “cease! men of my cast never ‘cease!’ What
I do, I do from reason: and as long as I am under the domination of that
power, you need not fear that I shall ever ‘cease.’ I have long buried
impulse, and I endeavour to act up to the dictates of the mind. Do not
imagine that I could have sacrificed my life—by the ordinary standard of
existence but only half spent—and devoted it to the attainment of an end,
and then stop, and fold my arms because a slight accident has happened
to cross me in my schemes. No—no. Be it again recorded that I now renew
the vow which I made twelvemonths ago. I again devote my life to the
vindication of that natural law which has been violated in....”
“Stop! Emmanuel,” cried the young officer, with warmth, as he stood
quickly up, and grasped the uplifted arm of Appadocca, “do not—for
G—d’s sake—for my sake—for your own sake, make another diabolical vow.
Emmanuel, you must know you cannot but afflict your friends by choosing
to remain in this unfortunate mesh in which you have entangled the
intellect and the heart that God has granted to you. I curse the day
that the name of this father of yours was ever made known to you; it has
led you to the perversion of your natural faculties, to the branding
of yourself with the stigma of parricide—against which all nature
revolts—and to your flying in the very face of Heaven.”
And the officer seemed deeply afflicted.
The captain still maintained his calm indifference, and, after the lapse
of a few seconds, said—
“Parricide—hum! and what would you have called, perchance, the act of the
father if the child had actually died of starvation? what if life had
ebbed from sheer inanition? You look only on the right of the parent and
not on that of the child, who, be it said, has a double claim—a claim
that nature gives him, and one which he inherits from the measure of
kindness and protection that his grandfather manifested to his immediate
progenitor when he himself was the child. You say, too, that all nature
revolts against the parricide—as you call it: error,—nature revolts
only against injustice. All things are entitled to a certain measure of
justice; and the natural contract between parent and child is based on
the condition that, as the former has loved the latter, and protected
its infancy, the latter, will yield obedience, honor, and respect, and
gratitude to him. Where the condition be not fulfilled, the contract, by
necessity, ceases, the child becomes absolved from his obligation; and if
he resents more than ordinary wrongs that may have been done to him, he
can assume, with all approbation of moral philosophy—nay, nature calls
upon him to undertake the office of avenger, and to vindicate her law. I
am no parricide!
“You need not fear that I shall prostitute the faculties with which you
are pleased to say God has gifted me; and, as for my flying in the face
of Heaven, in that respect you deceive yourself.
“I war not against God. On the contrary: recognise in me but the mere
tool of His justice. To believe that the Almighty could thus look on,
on crimes, and tie the hand of the avenger, is to suppose no just God.
No—no, the only difference between your sentiments and mine are, that
you imagine He reserves his rewards and punishments to be meted out in
Heavens and in hells—and I, on my part, can demonstrate, and consequently
must, and do believe that he uses a less cumbrous machinery, and makes
law—law which he instituted and impressed on things,—the regulator of his
creation, and the vindicator of itself. No: as long as I live, I shall
make it the end of my existence to prosecute the unworthy author of my
days, until the world shall learn by a dire deed that it is contrary to
justice to give life to a sentient being, then abandon it; and that all
organised creatures are endowed with sensibility to make them feel, and
spirit to make them resent injuries.”
“You have sunk yourself,” replied the officer, who seemed more inclined
to follow out his own opinions, than to give ear to the arguments of
Appadocca, “sufficiently deep in crimes, Emmanuel, without taking any
additional vows to load yourself more heavily with them. You may have
suffered grievous injuries, I do not gainsay, but why should privations
have led you to the vile course of robbing and thieving?”
“Robbery and thieving?”
“Yes, robbery and thieving: for how otherwise can I designate piracy?”
“Ha! I see,” replied Appadocca, controlling himself, “I see you have
either not gone far enough into philosophy, or that you blind yourself to
its lights. If I am guilty of piracy, you, too—the whole of mankind is
guilty of the very same sort of crime.”
“What do you mean by this?” asked Hamilton.
“Simply, that which my words convey,” replied Appadocca.
“Perhaps you will explain yourself more amply?” suggested Hamilton.
“Well,” rejoined Appadocca, “what I mean is plain enough, and it is this,
that the whole of the civilized world turns, exists, and grows enormous
on the licensed system of robbing and thieving, which you seem to
criminate so much. The barbarous hordes, whose fathers, either choice or
some unlucky accident, originally drove to some cold, frozen, cheerless,
and fruitless waste, increasing in numbers, wincing under the inclemency
of their clime and the poverty of their land, and longing after the
richer, and more fertile, and teeming soil of some other country,
desert their wretched regions, and with all the machinery of war, melt
down on the unprovoking nations, whose only crime is their being more
fortunate and blest, and wrench from their enervated sway the prosperous
fields that first provoked their famished cupidity. The people which
a convenient position, either on a neck of land, or the elbow of some
large river, first consolidated, developed, and enriched, after having
appropriated, through the medium of commerce, the wealth of its immediate
neighbours, sends forth its numerous and powerful ships to scour the
seas, to penetrate into hitherto unknown regions, where discovering new
and rich countries, they, in the name of civilization, first open an
intercourse with the peaceful and contented inhabitants, next contrive to
provoke a quarrel, which always terminates in a war that leaves them the
conquerors and possessors of the land. As for the original inhabitants
themselves, they are driven after the destruction of their cities, to
roam the woods, and to perish and disappear on the advance of their
greedy supplanters. Nations that are different only in the language
with which they vent their thoughts, inhabiting the same portions of
the globe, and separated but by a narrow stream, eagerly watch the
slightest inclination of accident in their respective favours, and on
the plea, either of religion—that fertile theme, and ready instigator—or
on the still more extensive and uncertain ground of politics, use the
chance that circumstances throw into their hands, make incursions and
fight battles, whose fruits are only misery and wretchedness. A fashion
springs up at a certain time to have others to labour for our benefit,
and to bear ‘the heat and burthen of the day’ in our stead: straightway,
the map of the world is opened, and the straggling and weakest portions
of a certain race, whose power of bodily and mental endurance, renders
them the likely objects to answer this end, are chosen. The coasts of
the country on which nature has placed them, are immediately lined with
ships of acquisitive voyagers, who kidnap and tear them away from the
scenes that teem with the associations of their own and their fathers’
happiness, load them with irons, throw them into the cruel ordeal of the
‘middle passage,’ to test whether they are sufficiently iron-constituted
as to survive the starvation, stench, and pestilential contagion which
decide the extent of the African’s endurance, and fix his value. This,
my dear friend is an abstracted idea of the manner in which the world
turns. But, as we used to say when we were younger, and happier, ‘in
generalibus latet fraus,’ allow me to descend to particulars, and to
bring my observations more closely home to society as now constituted.
In all the various parts which form its whole, you will be able to trace
the same spirit to which I impliedly referred in viewing the conduct of
congregated individuals,—nations. You find those whom fortune has called
to the first place in the state, instead of exerting their intellect to
the utmost stretch, and expanding their heart to its greatest width,
for the wise and virtuous government, and for the development of the
happiness of those who are subjected to their rule, wasting their time in
the pursuit of the most shadowy gewgaws, squandering, in empty vanities,
the tax-extorted treasures of their subjects—treasures that could have
preserved the flame of many a light of humanity, whose doom it has been
to flicker for a moment in a garret, and be for ever extinguished; or
pampering their already over-fed bodies to the point that sensitive
reason refuses to longer hold together with such masses of matter.
Those again in secondary spheres, use the authority with which they are
invested, not with the keen discernment of delicate justice, but on
the spur and press of passion. Is there some conquered people to be
governed?—they send their weak-minded, afflicted, and helpless friends
or relatives to govern those whose ancestors gave philosophy, religion,
and government to the world, but who must now themselves stoop, to cut
wood, and to carry water, when, by the common rules of justice, they
should be permitted to enjoy the land from which they have sprung, and to
participate in its dignities.
“What villainous case is there, that with the ready fee, does not find
the well-turned and silvery measures of the orator to palm it forth.
The widow’s mite, or the prince’s prerogative, may depend upon the
issue,—’tis all the same. Poverty and utter want may follow the words of
the cunning speaker, and rascality and villainy may rise triumphant,—what
matters it?
“At the side of suffering humanity stands the willing doctor, and plies,
and plies the rich patient with make-show drugs.
“From the pulpit invectives flow, for the voice of religion; charity
yields to controversy; the denunciation of other’s condemned and
re-condemned errors supply the place of the practice of benevolence; and
in the name of that Christ, who came with ‘peace and goodwill to man’,
evil passions are roused, daggers whetted, and massacres sanctified;
while he, who, with spectacles on nose, and twang in voice, moves the
ready machine, grins in his closet over the glittering gold that his
lectures, invectives, panegyrics, and homilies, bring in.
“This is not all. Are you hungry? the baker sends you bread compounded
with pestilential stuffs, grows rich, visits the church, sympathises with
heathen savages, and sends delegates to call them within the bosom of his
sweet civilization. Are you thirsty? the herb that nature furnishes you
for your refreshment is taken and turned, and painted, and fried till it
becomes poison, and then given you with balmy smiles.
“The world can be compared to a vast marsh, abounding with monster
alligators that devour the smaller creatures, and then each other.”
“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.”
“Well, well, I shall not discuss such points with you,” replied the
officer, “I cannot congratulate myself on possessing wits sharp enough
to cut through your strings of subtilities, I give up, therefore, these
unprofitable points: my instincts, I must declare, are against piracy.”
“Instincts, indeed!” partly interjected Appadocca, “another stumbling
block, and obstacle to science. There are no such things as instincts in
man: he alone is distinguished from the rest of organic beings by the
indefiniteness of his mind and sensibilities. The habits in which men
are brought up, the notions of ignorance which they have compounded and
adopted they call instincts, and thus saddle wise and good nature with an
amount of absurdities that would make her blush, if she were conscious of
the faults which she is made to bear on the ground of having implanted,
in the human breast, feelings which are as ridiculous as they are false.
As for you, Charles, I am somewhat surprised at you. It is clear you
have not improved since you left the university. The time that you had
for contemplation during your student’s life, ought to have produced
better fruits than an unconditional adoption of the vague notions of the
unreflecting, as soon as you found yourself among them.
“Pardon the freedom with which I speak—our friendship alone has made me
depart from the usual silence which I invariably maintain.”
“No—no apology is necessary, my dear Emmanuel—I know you—I know you!
Besides, we have always observed, that those who are endowed with a
certain amount of intellect, like the pendulum of a clock, are liable to
go as far from a given centre, in one direction as in the other. But let
us drop this topic, and think of your safety. I have heard your story,
and really I am not surprised that such a sensitive individual as you
should have been driven by so much injustice to a course which, with
all my sympathy towards you, I cannot but denounce. Appadocca, we have
seen happy and innocent days together, before either injury had driven
you into—into—crime, or the business of the world had thrown part of its
cares upon me: I could not stand with my arms folded and see you tried
like a malefactor, and, perhaps, end your life under the hands of a vile
hangman: I have formed a plan to facilitate your escape.”
“A plan to facilitate my escape?”
“Yes, I am in high command on board this ship, and I have men who are
devoted to me. This very night you will be put on shore.”
A pause ensued,—in which Appadocca seemed buried in deep reflection;
while Charles Hamilton, quite surprised by the coldness manifested on the
announcement of what he considered the happiest news to a prisoner,—the
prospects of escape—grew gradually pale, and paler as the truth began to
break upon him that his friend, from some strange doctrine of his own,
might obstinately refuse to consult his safety, and to avail himself of
the means of escape, which Hamilton could lay in his power.
After the lapse of a few minutes, Appadocca grasped the hand of the young
officer.
“No, no,” he said, “Charles, I esteem you too much, and venerate the law
of nature too much, to avail myself of this kindness. Recollect that
confidence is placed in you; you are bound to use it scrupulously, else
retribution will surely follow any breach of it. I thank you from the
bottom of my heart for your good intention, but I cannot,—I will not
accept your offer. If I escape, I shall do so without compromising any
person, least of all, one of my oldest, and most esteemed friends.”
“I was not aware,” replied the young officer, somewhat piqued, “that I
required to be reminded of the confidence which is here placed in me: be
not, however, so foolish as to refuse my offer, let me entreat you.”
“Do not press me.”
“I stake my friendship on your acceptance,” said the officer with some
determination. “He who refuses the good offices of a friend when he
requires them, especially in a case of life and death, can have no proper
feeling for him who proffers them, and he is, to boot—a fool. Good night,
Emmanuel,” continued the officer, getting up, somewhat angry, “I give you
until to-morrow to think of what I have offered.—Good night.”
The officer went out of the cabin, and Appadocca was left by himself.