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My dear reader, if it does not insult your understanding by
the self-evidence of the query, will you allow me to ask you a
question--which of the two is more culpable, the man who, finding
himself in a path of dereliction, arrests himself in his downward
career, and, by a wonderful effort of self-restraint, stops dead short,
and will suffer no inducement, no seduction, to lead him one step
further; or he, who, floating down the stream of his own vicious
passions, takes the flood-tide of iniquity, and, indifferent to every
consequence, deaf to all remonstrance, seeks but the indulgence of his
own egotistical pleasure with a stern determination to pursue it to the
last? Of course you will say, that he who repents is better than he who
persists; there is hope for the one, there is none for the other. Yet
would you believe it, our common law asserts directly the reverse,
pronouncing the culpability of the former as meriting heavy punishment,
while the latter is not assailable even by implication.
That I may make myself more clear, I shall give an instance of my
meaning. Scarcely a week passes over without a trial for breach of
promise of marriage. Sometimes the gay Lothario, to use the phrase
of the newspapers, is nineteen, sometimes ninety. In either case his
conduct is a frightful tissue of perjured vows and base deception.
His innumerable letters breathing all the tenderness of affectionate
solicitude, intended but for the eyes of her he loves, are read in
open court; attested copies are shown to the judge, or handed up to
the jury-box. The course of his true love is traced from the bubbling
fountain of first acquaintance to the broad river of his passionate
devotion. Its rapids and its whirlpools, its placid lakes, its frothy
torrents, its windings and its turnings, its ebbs and flows, are
discussed, detailed, and descanted on with all the hacknied precision of
the craft, as though his heart was a bill of exchange, or the current of
his affection a disputed mill-stream. And what, after all, is this man's
crime? knowing that love is the great humanizer of our race, and feeling
probably how much he stands in need of some civilizing process, he
attaches himself to some lovely and attractive girl, who, in the
reciprocity of her affection, is herself benefited in a degree equal
to him. If the soft solicitude of the tender passion, if its ennobling
self-respect, if its purifying influence on the heart, be good for the
man, how much more so is it for the woman. If _he_ be taught to feel how
the refined enjoyments of an attractive girl's mind are superior to the
base and degenerate pursuits of every-day pleasure, how much more will
_she_ learn to prize and cultivate those gifts which form the charm of
her nature, and breathe an incense of fascination around her steps. Here
is a compact where both parties benefit, but that they may do so to the
fullest extent, it is necessary that no self-interest, no mean prospect
of individual advantage, should interfere: all must be pure and
confiding. Love-making should not be like a game of _écarté_ with a
black leg, where you must not rise from the table till you are ruined.
No! it should rather resemble a party at picquet with your pretty
cousin, when the moment either party is tired, you may throw down the
cards and abandon the game.
This, then, is the case of the man; he either discovers that on further
acquaintance the qualities he believed in were not so palpable as
he thought, or, if there, marred in their exercise by opposing and
antagonist forces, of whose existence he knew not, he thinks he detects
discrepancies of temperament, disparities of taste; he foresees that in
the channel where he looked for deep water there are so many rocks, and
shoals, and quicksands, that he fears the bark of conjugal happiness may
be shipwrecked upon them; and like a prudent mariner, he resolves to
lighten the craft by “throwing over the lady.” Had this man married with
all these impending suspicions on his mind, there is little doubt he
would have made a most execrable husband; not to mention the danger that
his wife should not be all amiable as she ought. He stops short--that
is, he explains in one, perhaps in a series of letters, the reasons of
his new course.
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He expects in return the admiration and esteem of her, for whose
happiness he is legislating, as well as for his own; and oh, base
ingratitude! he receives a letter from her attorney. The gentlemen of
the long robe--newspaper again--are in ecstasies. Like devils on
the arrival of a new soul, they brighten up, rub their hands, and
congratulate each other on a glorious case. The damages are laid at five
thousand pounds; and, as the lady is pretty, and can be seen from the
jury-box, being fathers themselves, they award every sixpence of the
money.
I can picture to myself the feeling of the defendant at such a moment
as this. As he stands alone in conscious honesty, ruminating on his
fate--alone, I say, for, like Mahomet's coffin, he has no resting-place;
laughed at by the men, sneered at by the women, mulcted of perhaps half
his fortune, merely because for the last three years of his life he
represented himself in every amiable and attractive trait that can grace
and adorn human nature. Who would wonder, if, like the man in the farce,
he would register a vow never to do a good-natured thing again as long
as he lives; or what respect can he have for a government or a country,
where the church tells him to love his neighbour, and the chief justice
makes him pay five thousand for his obedience.
I now come to the other case, and I shall be very brief in my
observations. I mean that of him, who equally fond of flirting as the
former, has yet a lively fear of an action at law. Love-making with him
is a necessity of his existence--he is an Irishman, perhaps, and it is
as indispensable to his temperament as train-oil to a Russian. He
likes sporting, he likes billiards, he likes his club, and he likes the
ladies; but he has just as much intention of turning a huntsman at the
one, or a marker at the other, as he has of matrimony. He knows life is
a chequered table, and that there could be no game if all the squares
were of one colour. He alternates, therefore, between love and sporting,
between cards and courtship, and as the pursuit is a pleasant one, he
resolves never to give up. He waxes old, therefore, with young habits,
adapting his tastes to his time of life; he does not kneel so often
at forty as he did at twenty, but he ogles the more, and is twice as
good-tempered. Not perhaps as ready to fight for the lady, but ten times
more disposed to flatter her. She may love him, or she may not; she may
receive him as of old, or she may marry another. What matters it to him?
All his care is that _he_ shouldn't change. All his anxiety is, to let
the rupture, if there must be one, proceed from _her_ side. He knows in
his heart the penalty of breach of promise, but he also knows that the
Chancellor can issue no injunction compelling a man to marry, and that
in the courts of love the bills are payable at convenience.
Here, then, are the two cases, which, in conformity with the world's
opinion, I have dignified with every possible term of horror and
reproach. In the one, the measure of iniquity is but half filled; in the
other, the cup is overflowing at the brim. For the lesser offence, the
law awards damages and defamation: for the greater, society pronounces
an eulogy upon the enduring fidelity of the man thus faithful to a first
love.
If a person about to buy a horse should, on trying him for an hour or
two, discover that his temper did not suit him, or that his paces were
not pleasant, and should in consequence restore him to the owner: and
if another, on the same errand, should come day after day for weeks,
or months, or even years, cantering him about over the pavement, and
scouring over the whole country; his answer being, when asked if he
intended to purchase, that he liked the horse exceedingly, but that he
hadn't got a stable, or a saddle, or a curb-chain, or, in fact, some one
or other of the little necessaries of horse gear; but that when he had,
that was exactly the animal to suit him--he never was better carried
in his life. Which of these two, do you esteem the more honest and
more honourable? When you make up your mind, please also to make the
application.
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