Harbonah was one of the chamberlains of that king Ahasuerus, who reigned
from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty
provinces. And Harbonah it was that said before the king,—when Haman, the
son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the Jews’ enemy, had gone one step too far
in his enmity to the Jews, and had let his vaulting ambition overleap
itself in his insolent confidence in royal favour,—Harbonah it was that
prompted royal vengeance with the suggestive reminder,—“Behold also, the
gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had
spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman.” Then the king
said—catching at once at the chamberlain’s suggestion—“Hang him thereon.”
“So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai.”
Somewhat musty is the adage that no law is more equitable than that by
which the deviser of death perishes by his own device: _nec lex est
æquior ulla, quam necis artificem arte perire suâ_. Musty it might be
even in Harbonah’s days; but the chamberlain, in the excitement of so
signal an example, would feel that time cannot stale, nor custom wither,
the force and import of that retributive law.
Mr. de Quincey, in his memorable narrative of the revolt of the Tartars,
or flight of the Kalmuck Khan and his people from the Russian territories
to the frontiers of China (1771), relates in conclusion how Zebek-Dorchi,
the author and originator of this great Tartar _exodus_, perished after a
manner specially gratifying to those who compassed his ruin; the Chinese
morality being exactly of that kind which approves in everything the _lex
talionis_. “Finally, Zebek-Dorchi was invited to the imperial lodge,
together with all his accomplices; and under the skilful management
of the Chinese nobles in the emperor’s establishment, the murderous
artifices of these Tartar chieftains were made to recoil upon themselves,
and the whole of them perished by assassination at a great imperial
banquet.” Iterated and reiterated in holy writ is the retributive law
that the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness; that transgressors
shall be taken in their own naughtiness; that he that seeketh mischief it
shall come unto him. The presidents and princes under King Darius, who
sought occasion against Daniel, and persuaded their reluctant sovereign
to cast the prophet into the den of lions, who however wrought him no
manner of hurt,—upon _them_ the _lex talionis_ vindicated its literal
severity when they in their turn were cast into the lions’ den, and the
lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces or
ever they came at the bottom of the den.
The early ballads of almost every literature delight in these retributive
surprises. Genuine was the zest of our fathers for such a retort as that
of William of Cloudesly on the Justice who is having him measured for his
grave:—
“‘I have seen as great a marvel,’ said Cloudesly,
‘As between this and prime
He that maketh a grave for me
Himself may lie therein.’”
So fond is popular history of teaching this sort of philosophy by
examples, that examples to the purpose are widely accepted which are
yet not historical. Cardinal Balue, under Louis XI., is pointed out
in his iron cage, as a malignant inventor punished in and through his
own invention; but Michelet has exposed the fallacy of supposing Balue
the inventor of those iron cages which had long been known in Italy.
Still he had the “merit” of being their importer into France; and the
_lex talionis_ has its application to him. One remembers of course the
Regent Morton hugged to death by the “maiden” he had been the means of
introducing into Scotland. The French doctor, Guillotin, is even now
not uncommonly believed to have perished in the reign of terror by the
instrument invented by and named after him; whereas he quietly died in
his bed, many, many years later than that. But the Revolution history
is well stored with instances like that of Châlier, condemned to death
by the criminal tribunal at Lyons,—the guillotine, which he had sent
for from Paris to destroy his enemies, being first destined to sever
his own head from his body. A bungling executioner prolonged the last
agonies of this man, who in fact was hacked to death, not decapitated.
He tasted slowly, as Lamartine says, of the death, a thirst for which
he had so often sought to excite in the people; “he was glutted with
blood, but it was his own.” Alison recognises in the death of Murat a
memorable instance of the moral retribution which often attends upon
“great deeds of iniquity, and by the instrumentality of the very acts
which appeared to place them beyond its reach.” He underwent in 1815
the very fate to which, seven years before, he had consigned a hundred
Spaniards at Madrid, guilty of no other crime than that of defending
their country; and this, as Sir Archibald adds, “by the application
of a law to his own case, which he himself had introduced, to check
the attempts of the Bourbons to regain a throne which he had usurped.”
No man, Lord Macaulay affirms, ever made a more unscrupulous use of
the legislative power for the destruction of his enemies than Thomas
Cromwell; and it was by an unscrupulous use of the legislative power
that he was himself destroyed. Those who tauntingly reminded Fenwick,
when attainted in 1696, that he had supported the bill which attainted
Monmouth, were warned that they might perhaps themselves be tauntingly
reminded in some dark and terrible hour, that they had supported the bill
which attainted Fenwick. “God forbid that our tyrants should ever be able
to plead, in justification of the worst that they can inflict upon us,
precedents furnished by ourselves!” Again, it is in recording how, late
in life, a horrible calumny settled upon Cicero, that Mr. de Quincey,
without lending a moment’s credit to the foul insinuation, nevertheless
is free to recognise the equity of this retribution revolving upon one
who, he asserts, had so often slandered others in the same malicious
way. “At last the poisoned chalice came round to his own lips, and at a
moment when it wounded the most acutely.” _Sæpe_, as Seneca has it, _in
magistrum scelera redierunt sua_.