I now, my dearest friend, resume my pen, to obey my mother, in giving
you her opinion upon your unhappy story.
She still harps upon the old string, and will have it that all your
calamities are owing to your first fatal step; for she believes, (what
I cannot,) that your relations had intended after one general trial
more, to comply with your aversion, if they had found it to be as
riveted a one, as, let me say, it was a folly to suppose it would not
be found to be, after so many ridiculously-repeated experiments.
As to your latter sufferings from that vilest of miscreants, she is
unalterably of opinion that if all be as you have related (which she
doubts not) with regard to the potions, and to the violences you have
sustained, you ought by all means to set on foot a prosecution against
him, and against his devilish accomplices.
She asks, What murderers, what ravishers, would be brought to justice,
if modesty were to be a general plea, and allowable, against appearing
in a court to prosecute?
She says, that the good of society requires, that such a beast of prey
should be hunted out of it: and, if you do not prosecute him, she
thinks you will be answerable for all the mischiefs he may do in the
course of his future villanous life.
Will it be thought, Nancy, said she, that Miss Clarissa Harlowe can be
in earnest, when she says, she is not solicitous to have her disgraces
concealed from the world, if she be afraid or ashamed to appear in
court, to do justice to herself and her sex against him? Will it not be
rather surmised, that she may be apprehensive that some weakness, or
lurking love, will appear upon the trial of the strange cause? If,
inferred she, such complicated villany as this (where perjury, potions,
forgery, subornation, are all combined to effect the ruin of an
innocent creature, and to dishonour a family of eminence, and where the
very crimes, as may be supposed, are proofs of her innocence) is to go
off with impunity, what case will deserve to be brought into judgment?
or what malefactor ought to be hanged?
Then she thinks, and so do I, that the vile creatures, his accomplices,
ought, by all means, to be brought to condign punishment, as they must
and will be upon bringing him to trial: and this may be a mean to blow
up and root out a whole nest of vipers, and save many innocent
creatures.
She added, that if Miss Clarissa Harlowe could be so indifferent about
having this public justice done upon such a wretch for her own sake,
she ought to overcome her scruples out of regard to her family, her
acquaintance, and her sex, which are all highly injured and scandalized
by his villany to her.
For her own part, she declares, that were she your mother, she would
forgive you upon no other terms: and, upon your compliance with these,
she herself will undertake to reconcile all your family to you.
These, my dear, are my mother’s sentiments upon your sad story.
I cannot say but there are reason and justice in them: and it is my
opinion, that it would be very right for the law to oblige an injured
woman to prosecute, and to make seduction on the man’s part capital,
where his studied baseness, and no fault in her will, appeared.