Donald Campbell

“ To us, my Frederick, who live in a country where an hour’s detention in a house against our will is punished as unlawful imprisonment, and who feel and value the rich treasure of liberty above all earthly blessings, the bare idea of slavery appears horrible; when the miseries of slavery are sharpened by cruelty, our indignation burns at the offence: but such a complicated piece of enormity as that I have mentioned, almost transcends belief, and indignation is lost in amazement. ”

“ It is thus that, in the down-hill path of vice, we are hurried on step by step, fondly imagining that each successive object, which bounds our sight, will stop our headlong career; while alas! every step we advance gives additional rapidity to our descent: like the centripetal force of a projectile, our pace increases with uniformly accelerated motion—till disdaining all controul, and breaking down every impediment that reason, morality, or honour throw in the way to rescue us or retard our ruin, we precipitate unexpectedly into the last gulph of vice and infamy. ”

“ It was still the hot season of the year, and we were to travel through that country, over which the horrid wind I have before mentioned sweeps its consuming blasts: it is called by the Turks Samiel, is mentioned by holy Job under the name of the East Wind, and extends its ravages all the way from the extreme end of the Gulph of Cambaya up to Mosul; it carries along with it fleaks of fire, like threads of silk; instantly strikes dead those that breathe it, and consumes them inwardly to ashes; the flesh soon becoming black as a coal, and dropping off from the bones. ”

“ I trust my heart and understanding are above such very degrading prejudices: but I abhor every thing that militates against human happiness——every thing that crushes the operations of intellect——every thing that stops the current of opinion, and prevents its course from enlarging and meliorating our condition: I abhor the impertinent and hypocritical intrusion of all Churchmen upon national or domestic concerns; the more, when that intrusion is mischievous; and more still, when it assumes the mask of piety——for that is at once a fraud upon Man and an abuse of God. ”

“ Ghent was the See of a Bishop, who, like the Bishop of Bruges, was Suffragan to the Archbishop of Mechlin. Thus, in most Christian Countries, are the intellects, the consciences, and the cash too, of the People, shut up and hid from the light, by Priest within Dean, and Dean within Bishop——like a ring in the hand of a conjurer, box within box——till at last they are enveloped in the great receptacle of all deception, the capacious pocket of the Archbishop. Let not sceptered Tyrants, their legions, their scaffolds, and their swords, bear all the infamy of the slavery of Mankind! ”

“ Franklin, has left us, among innumerable instructions for the conduct of human life, and for remedying many of the grievances of it, directions for going a voyage at sea, and has particularly enforced the folly of quitting ships hastily, and yielding, one’s self up to despair. I am convinced, that nine tenths of the people who perish by shipwreck, perish from the want of presence of mind, and sufficient fortitude to bear them out. The unhappy Purser, who sat deliberately in a chair, and suffered himself, without a struggle, to be carried overboard, is an instance in point. ”

“ As your happiness, my dear boy, is the first object of my life, my efforts shall be turned to the guiding of your greener years from any premature impressions; and when reason and matured age fit you for the cultivation and enjoyment of female society, be it mine to direct your steps away from that class, who think rank a sufficient sanction for vice, who stare in all the bronze of aristocratic assurance, under a load of obloquy, beneath which the poorest peasant’s wife would sink; who think that wealth and rank confer a right to commit excesses that would degrade the meanest of the canaille ”

“ I have already said more than once, that I have a most perfect conviction your amiable disposition will ensure to you the love of Mankind; but it will at the same time subject you to many impositions——to guard against which, a great share of sternness is sometimes necessary: there is, besides, a certain degree of fortitude absolutely requisite to give lustre to a gentle disposition; without it, meekness is thought timidity——modesty, weakness——and the charming mildness of the forgiving heart, abused as the pitiful resource of abject apprehension and a mean spirit. ”

“ My last letter has shewn you, that the conceptions of genius, though they may want the aid of the Press to bring them in full and perfect disclosure to the world, will yet burst through their bounds, and find some means of communication with mankind; for though the art of Printing be unknown in Turkey, the emanations of superior intellect and fancy find their way to the general ear through the medium of public declamation in coffee-houses. ”

“ I was determined to die a thousand deaths sooner than serve any State hostile to Great Britain——but still more a Tyrant, whose country, nature and principles I detested, and could never think of without the greatest horror; and I judged, that if such an offer should be made, and I refused it, my life would fall a sacrifice to their rage and disappointment, or at least I should live a life of imprisonment, and never more behold country, family, friends, connections, or any thing that I valued in life. ”

“ Often when I have heard, in coffee-houses and play-houses, some of our sporting sparks boasting of their prowess over a timid hare or a feeble fox, I could not help recollecting with respect the hunters of India, who chase the destructive monsters of the forest——the boar, the tyger, the hyena, the bull, or the buffalo; and, while they steel the nerves, animate the courage, and, by habitual deeds of pith, fit themselves for war, render essential service to their fellow-creatures, and save the lives and property of thousands. ”

“ As an Englishman, zealous for the welfare of my Country, I wish the King of Prussia may not, by his attention to Poland, sacrifice all Germany to the French. As an honest man, I cannot help entertaining a wish, that the scandalous and outrageous wrongs done to Poland, and this treachery to the Allies whom he himself brought into the present difficulties, may be expiated by any calamity, however great, that does not extend to the interest or wellbeing of Europe. ”

“ The truth is, my dear Frederick, the Turks, like all other people, have their share of vices, but are by no means countenanced in them by their Religion; and from what I have been able to collect, as well from my own inquiries and observations, as from reading the best Historians, I am persuaded that they have not, in the whole scope of Mahomedanism, one doctrine so subversive of virtue, or so encouraging to the indulgence of vice, as many that are to be found in that curious code, Popery. ”

“ Great God!—What a horrible thought!—what an indelible stigma! that a Legislator shall, in the cold blood of commerce, make a calculation of the probable profit upon human lives—put commercial expediency in the balance against murder—and make convenience the excuse for crime!—Why, the robber may do so!—But shall Britons, generous Britons, who boastful claim precedence of the world in freedom, humanity, and justice—shall they look on and see inferior nations spurning from them with horror the debasing traffic ”

“ The truth is, that the science of the Law, which, however despicable in practice, is the noblest of human sciences, quickens and invigorates the understanding more than all the other kinds of learning put together; while the study of Divinity (I do not mean real Divinity or Morality, but that whimsical jumble of miracles and incongruities, of fulsome cant and senseless rhapsody, called so by Churchmen) contracts the understanding, and bends it into a kind of crooked cunning. ”

“ Perhaps there is no part of the world where the flame of parental affection burns with more ardent and unextinguishable strength, or is more faithfully returned by reciprocal tenderness and filial obedience, than Turkey. Educated in the most unaffected deference and pious submission to their parents’ will; trained both by precept and example to the greatest veneration for the aged, and separated almost from their infancy from the women, they acquire a modesty to their superiors, and a bashfulness and respectful deportment to the weaker sex, which never cease to influence them through life. ”

“ It was to him the Company were first indebted for the introduction of perfect military discipline into their army in India. In the various relations in which he stood, whether domestic or public, as, the subject, the citizen, the father, or the friend, he was so uniformly excellent, that the shafts of malevolence, which the best and wisest of men have but too often felt, seldom reached him; and he may justly be reckoned amongst that very small number of created beings, of whom scarcely any one had the audacity to speak ill. ”

“ What a powerful engine has superstition been, in the cunning management of Priests! How lamentable it is to think, that not only all who believed, but all who had good sense enough not to believe, should, for so many centuries, have been kept in prostrate submission to the will and dominion of an old man in Rome!——My blushes for the folly and supineness of Mankind, however, are lost in a warm glow of transport at the present irradiation of the human mind ”

“ Europe at this moment presents an awful and alarming crisis. In a neighbouring Country, the conduct of the higher classes of society has produced a dreadful convulsion: social order has been subverted, and the stability of property annihilated: all reasoning from the history of former times is found inapplicable to the present: the system of warfare itself has undergone a revolution; and no man is able to say from positive inference, “Thus will it be to-morrow.” ”

“ We were now treading that illustrious Island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion, would be impossible if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses—whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. ”

“ Lay this to your mind, my dear Frederick: talk over it to your brother; indulge all the charming sympathetic sensations it communicates: never let a mistaken shame, or a false idea (which some endeavour to impress) that it is unmanly to melt at the tale of woe, and sympathize with, our fellow-creatures, 50stop the current of your sensibility——no! Be assured, that, on the contrary, it is the true criterion of manhood and valour to feel; and that the more sympathetic and sensible the heart is, the more nearly it is allied to the Divinity. ”

“ The time is nevertheless pregnant with extraordinary event; and you are now approaching that age at which men should be ready to act at the call of their Country. It is therefore fitting for you to make such things the subject of frequent contemplation——to habituate your mind to the meeting of danger, so as to be ready, at a moment’s warning, to lay down your life, if necessary, for the good of your Country; for, after all, my Frederick, what avails it whether we die in this way or in that?——to die with honour and a good conscience, is all. ”

“ Hyder Alli Khawn, late Nabob of Mysore, and father to the present Tippoo Sahib Sultain, was as extraordinary a man, and perhaps possessed as great natural talents, as any recorded in the page of History. Born and bred up in the lowest ranks of an unenlightened and ignorant People, and to the last day of his life perfectly illiterate, he not only emerged from his native obscurity by the vigour of his mind and body, but became an object of terror and admiration to surrounding Potentates. ”

“ Thus prepared, they meet the Carnival, when every thing conspires to give circulation to indulgence; and when those operations of the mind which with us have so many channels to discharge themselves, with them, like a vast stream suddenly confined to one narrow channel, burst forth with an irresistible torrent, and carry away before them every bond that religion or morality has laid down as restraints on the exuberance of human passion. ”

“ Aix-la-chapelle——The imperial city of Aix-la-Chapelle, by the Germans called Achen, lies at the distance of twenty-fix miles, nearly East, of Liege. As it was a moderate stage, the weather fine, and the face of the country around beautiful, I found my journey extremely pleasant, and entered that famous city in as good a disposition to be pleased with it, as circumstances and reflections so melancholy as mine (which, in spite of every effort, would intrude themselves) may be supposed to allow. It is certainly a very fine city, and well deserves the reputation it has in all parts of the world. ”

“ If experience would allow us to wonder at any thing in the management of the Rulers of Nations, it must surely be matter of astonishment, that in an article of such consequence as eternity, and which must be directed by private sentiments alone, such violence should systematically be offered to opinion, and that Mankind should be dragooned, as they have been for so many weary centuries, into the profession of particular modes of faith. Combating opinion by force is so absurd, that I am sure those who have attempted it, never could flatter themselves with the slightest hopes of success. ”