Complicity

“ The purest among you are at least guilty of this complicity. You look away when there is a suggestion of foul conspiracies with vile aims, or of the shameful intrigues of factions which crawl in the dark, letting them go by in silence. ”

“ What must be remembered in any case is that secret complicity that joins the logical and the everyday to the tragic. ”

“ There are conditions of blindness so voluntary that they become complicity." ”

“ Our fellow-captives are a motley collection of the victims of nature, of justice, and of tyranny—of lunatics who are insensible of their situation, of thieves who deserve it, and of political criminals whose guilt is the accident of birth, the imputation of wealth, or the profession of a clergyman. ”

“ Why do you compel the son of your comrade to utter his first words in the forum with the voice of indignation and complaint? Why do you compel the wife of your comrade, the mother-in-law of your comrade, in short, the whole family of your dead comrade, to hear evidence against you? Why do you compel most modest and admirable women to come against their wont and against their will into so great an assembly of men? ”

“ The communication has been made to you in consequence of the confidence placed in you, and which does you honor. Now we discover our error; a title and promotion attach you to the government we wish to overturn. We will not constrain you to help us; we enroll no one against his conscience, but we will compel you to act generously, even if you are not disposed to do so.”
“‘“You would call acting generously, knowing your conspiracy and not informing against you, that is what I should call becoming your accomplice. ”

“ How could the wretch, about to escape all human reckoning, making cowardly confession of crime involving fellow-guilt, hope that his confidences would remain inviolate? One of the penalties of faithless duplicity is that all trust in fellow-fealty dies. ”

“ Barrows with the family towards which this accusation evidently pointed. While my own heart beat with dread, how could I ignore the possibility of these words being the work of an accomplice disgusted with his crime, or of a tool anxious to save himself, and at the same time to avenge some fancied slight? I could not. If peace and hope were lost in the effort, I must learn the truth and satisfy myself, once and for all, as to whose hatred and fear the Pollards were indebted for insinuations at once so tremendous and so veiled. ”

“ There may be some, my lords, that will impute this absurdity of our conduct, this disregard of our interest, this desertion of our alliances, and this neglect of the most apparent opportunities of success, not to cowardice, but treachery; a cause more detestable, as more atrociously criminal. ”

“ My mind, eager to follow up the first success, was entangled in tedious and intricate negotiation with men whom no sense of right or wrong could stimulate to integrity. Rival interests to be conciliated, gross corruption to be crushed, paltry passions to be stigmatized, family hatreds to be reconciled, childish antipathies, grasping avarice, giddy ambition, savage cruelty, to be rectified, propitiated, or punished, were among my tasks before I could plant a foot in the field. If those are the fruits that grow round even the righteous cause, what must be the rank crop of conspiracy? ”

“ Shall we, for any vexation, provocation, or in jury, tolerate within ourselves that baleful agent which has so often wrought misery, sown discord and disunion, arrayed brother against brother, and friend against friend, sundered the bonds of man's fellowship to man, desolated kingdoms, and covered the face of the earth with blood? ”

“ To many readers it will doubtless appear a harsh and unequal institution, authorizing one party to impose upon the other an oath of purgation, to be taken under circumstances very painful to the feelings, to remove a suspicion which might originate in unreasonable jealousy. ”

“ If we thought ye would through malice, conspiracy, or dissension, leave us your friends in the briars and betray us, we could as well sundry ways forsee and provide for our own safeguards as any of you, by betraying us, can do for yours. ”

“ Whether you examine the conduct of the nation at large, or that of its chiefs and leaders, your feelings revolt at the one, and your integrity despises the other. You see the idols erected by Folly, degraded by Caprice;—the authority obtained by Intrigue, bartered by Profligacy;—and the perfidy and corruption of one side so balanced by the barbarity and levity of the other, that the mind, unable to decide on the preference of contending vices, is obliged to find repose, though with regret and disgust, in acknowledging the general depravity. ”

“ With calm and unruffled dignity he listens to all you say, and with unconcealed dislike he makes it a point to remember nothing he has heard, or, if remembering, to treasure it up as something to be avoided. Your counsels are considered as baits and traps, and your desire to domiciliate him as an effort to bring him under your control. You are and must ever remain, to him, an object of suspicion and distrust. ”

“ Public opinion has accused you; and accusation there is synonymous with guilt. But I, who give you so much pain, come as your friend and brother, speaking hard truths to you, dearest, by virtue of the tie which binds us to our mother. ”

“ Your crime has been accompanied with every speices of aggravation. Under the mask of friendship you have robbed a poor innocent man, deluded by your treacherous designs, and your false friendship: it is further aggravated by the baseness and inhumanity of your deceit, which cannot intitle you to any instance of mercy, but requires that you may be made an example of immediate justice. On Monday, therefore, I shall make the report of you to his Majesty. ”

“ They are not divided in opinion as to which of their enemies shall be sought after first. They say: 'Let us even the account every day and night out of the nearest assembly of the enemy and when we have brought all the enemy into the right way of thinking we can demand the very people who did the shame and offences. In the meantime, let it be any life.' This is good counsel for us in our account, oh my mother. ”

“ He who makes presents to a lady, or a minister of justice, attempts their corruption by the act, and in his imagination supposes he has effected it. You ought, therefore, [Pg 9] my Son, to consider every one who attempts to gain your favour by such means, as an enemy to your conscience, and as a person dangerous to, and one who would injure your honour; and you should look upon him as a man, more deserving of your contempt and indignation, than your courtesy. ”

“ Thus has he accused himself without gaining anything, and if he wishes to save his life he must accuse others; and who can be accused but his own friends and acquaintances? nay, in all probability, his own relations—his brothers, sisters, wife, sons or daughters—for it is natural to suppose that in all such practices a man will trust only his own family. ”

“ In the world are to be seen public characters, families of illustrious names, who still preserve with each other certain measures of decency, which, indeed, they cannot break through without scandal; yet, nevertheless, live in different interests, in public and avowed sentiments of envy, of jealousy, and of mutual animosity; thwart and do every thing in their power to ruin each other, view each other with the most jealous eyes, and make all their creatures partisans in their resentments and aversions ”

“ If you would serve yourselves or your countrymen in your conversation with those whose good will you desire to conciliate, seek it by the honest avowal of your convictions rather than the unappreciated flattery of inconsiderate assent; never demean yourselves by condescending to that pitiful weapon of the coward, the anonymous slander of a neighbour. If, after due inquiry, you have satisfied yourselves that there is an injustice that calls for remedy, denounce it openly, but in terms that evince just resentment and mot vindictiveness. ”

“ When it comes to condemning one of our fellows, and withdrawing our esteem from him, we should act from our own convictions only. But have we any right to make our heart a tribunal before which we arraign our neighbor? ”

“ For who can wonder that, allured on one side, and frightened on the other, some should endeavour to gain favour by bribing the judge with an appearance of respect which they do not feel, to excite compassion by confessing weakness of which they are not convinced; and others to attract regard by a show of openness and magnanimity, by a daring profession of their own deserts, and a public challenge of honours and rewards? ”

“ Durand guilty, and so do many others, I fear, in spite of his long record for honesty and uprightness. And why? Because you will not admit the possibility of another person’s guilt,—a person standing so high in private and public estimation that the very idea seems preposterous and little short of insulting to the country of which he is an acknowledged ornament. ”

“ There are others on whom a charge has been laid from their childhood, a charge perhaps'—and her voice faltered at last—'impressed on them by dying lips, which must govern, possess their lives; which it would be baseness, treason, to betray. ”

“ To account for your own hard-heartedness and ingratitude in such a case, you are bound to prove the other party's crime. It is not that you are selfish, brutal, and angry at the failure of a speculation—no, no—it is that your partner has led you into it by the basest treachery and with the most sinister motives. ”

“ What through the coercion of mere circumstances—what through the entreaties of wife and children, co-operating with such circumstances—or sometimes through weakness of nature, or through relenting of compunction—it is not to be doubted that, as the cohesion of party begins rapidly to relax under approaching ruin, there will be confessions in abundance. ”

“ Now not merely will they not complain, they will take counsel how to wash their hands of the affair and squeeze out of it. No one will reproach us with anything, and our fame will be like the white mantle of the Order, stainless. ”

“ Consider the cloak that our employment or station is; how rarely men treat each other for what in their true and naked characters they are; how we use and tolerate pretension; how the judge is clothed with dignity which does not belong to him, and the trembling witness with humility that does not belong to him, and the criminal, perchance, with shame or impudence which no more belong to him. ”

“ In a word we defines all relationships from the{61} narrowest and most important, most essential, to the most individual and accidental. Conceivably the we unites also people who have something evil in common, who use it a great deal among themselves, and because of habit, in places where they would rather not have done so. Therefore, if you pay attention you may hear some suspect who denies his guilt, come out with a we which confesses his alliance with people who do the things he claims not to: we pickpockets, we house-breakers, we gamblers, inverts, etc. ”

“ Soon your chastisement will serve as a memorable example to posterity! That is how a man must speak to you in whom you at first inspired pity. Accuse no one of conspiracy against your infernal Constitution. ”

“ Not merely the sins of the fathers, but those of the most distant relations, those of neighbors, of fellow-tribesmen, of fellow-citizens, have been visited upon those whose sole guilt lay in such a connection with the directly guilty parties. ”

“ They roll around their affrightened eyes on attending friends. And, if accomplices in debauchery, it sharpens their anguish, to consider the further aggravation of their guilt, that they have not sinned alone, but drawn others into the same snare. ”

“ Are we engaged in quarrels and misunderstandings with our neighbours? these were all begun and inflamed by the false, malicious tongues of our servants. Are the secrets of our family betrayed, and evil repute spread of us? our servants were the authors. Do false accusers rise up against us? (an evil too frequent in this country) they have been tampering with our servants. Do our children discover folly, malice, pride, cruelty, revenge, undutifulness in their words and actions? are they seduced to lewdness or scandalous marriages? it is all by our servants. ”

“ Who has ever brought back to his wife and children anything but resentment and hatred, party strife and personal quarrels, from which you are to be protected not by your own courage and honesty of purpose, but by the help of others? ”

“ How can I expect you to care any more for me and my affairs, than for anybody else and anybody else’s affairs? What right have I to inflict upon you a recital of events, in no way connected with yourself, that three-fourths of you believe untrue, and that concerns parties you never saw and perhaps never will see? ”

“ Infirmity and misery do not of necessity imply guilt. They approach or recede from shades of that dark alliance, in proportion to the probable motives and prospects of the offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of the offence ”

“ We do not know that A is a thief because we distrust him. We might, indeed, be tempted to view the Immediate as 'grounded upon' the Mediate. For the proof of A's guilt has converted our feeling into a reasoned distrust; the movement of mediation has ended in the grounding of the Immediate. ”

“ In private life you would, as a “self-respecting” man, probably leave any one guilty of these things to the society of his boon companions, to the mercy of his creditors and, perhaps, to the attention of the police. ”

“ If any deception be practiced towards each other the culpable party will incur, sooner or later, the rarely failing punishment—disappointment in their pleasures, their domestic anticipations, and their hopes of hereditary succession. ”

“ Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my neighbor and I shall often agree in our means, and work together for a time to one end. But whenever I find my dominion over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep the truth, and come into false relations to him. ”