Garrulity

“ When you have stripped off the marks of your dignity, your equestrian ring, and your whole Roman dress, and from a man invested with the office of judge, shew yourself at once under the appearance of the slave Dama; disgraced as you are, and hiding your perfumed head under your cloak, you are not the man whom you feign to be: you are at least introduced full of terror, and your whole frame shakes through the struggles of two opposite passions. ”

“ Do not treat lightly my poor garb and estate, for I have the power to exalt myself if it pleaseth me to do so, and thou hast no authority either to hamper me in this fashion or to carry off any of my property. Now, in order that thou mayest not dare to do anything in ignorance, and so fall under condemnation, behold, I send thee [this] message; for it is meet that towards senseless and foolish men we should act in a masterful manner, and with pride, even as our noble rank enableth us to do, and should treat them as fools and men of no understanding. ”

“ I see all the captious jealousy of conscious usurpation dreaded, detested, and obeyed—the giddiness and intoxication of splendid but unmerited success—the arrogance, the presumption, the self-will of unlimited and idolized power, and—more dreadful than all in the plenitude of authority—the restless and incessant activity of guilty but unsated ambition. ”

“ His presumption and overweening, for that he should without reason, without cause, or without any appearance of truth, have dared to prescribe, by his private authority, what things should be denotated and signified by the colour: which is the custom of tyrants, who will have their will to bear sway in stead of equity, and not of the wise and learned, who with the evidence of reason satisfy their readers. ”

“ Among 'em reigns the sixth essence; by the means of which they gripe all, devour all, conskite all, burn all, draw all, hang all, quarter all, behead all, murder all, imprison all, waste all, and ruin all, without the least notice of right or wrong; for among them vice is called virtue; wickedness, piety; treason, loyalty; robbery, justice. Plunder is their motto, and when acted by them is approved by all men, except the heretics; and all this they do because they dare; their authority is sovereign and irrefragable. ”

“ He had seen similar evils to those which we have seen and suffered. “There is an evil which I have seen under the sun as an error which proceedeth from the ruler: folly is set in great dignity, and the rich sit in low place. I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth.” ”

“ Thou wilt indeed render me a service in depriving me of this wretched head, hideous without, and I must fear, empty within, seeing that it hath not prevented me from wasting my life in the service of vanity and luxury. Woe to the sage who trusts his infirm wisdom and frail integrity within the precincts of a court! Yet can I foretell a time when philosophers shall no longer run on the futile and selfish errands of kings, and when kings shall be suffered to rule only so far as they obey the bidding of philosophers. ”

“ Great as your matchless Merits, is your Pow'r,
At your Approach, the baffled Tyrant Death
Breaks his keen Shafts, and grinds his clashing Teeth,
To you we leave the Conduct of the Day;
What you command, your Vassals must obey.
If this dread Enterprise you wou'd decline,
We'll lend to treat, and stifle the Design.
But if my Arguments had force, we'd try
To humble our audacious Foes, or die.
Our Spight, they'll find, to their Advantage leans,
The End is good, no matter for the Means. ”

“ We might expect to find in it the marks of despotism, severity, harshness, want of consideration, and yet we find the very opposite—mildness and humanity. But this mildness itself is a despotic mildness, that is, it robs one person of what it gives another—it is the mildness of arbitrariness and caprice, not that of humanity—it is the penalty of cruelty. ”

“ May it not be that this girl, by reason of her long practice of submission—induced by others—has dethroned her conscious, higher self, making of her subliminal self a tyrant? This submerged self, holding, as it does, all the experiences of the dark past, all the lusts, deceits, and subterfuges, all the cruelties and shameless potentialities of her animal and semicivilized forebears, and being but a mass of discordant impulses—states almost entirely disassociated from her conscious life—has all but taken possession of her higher self. ”

“ Perhaps, if we are still honest with ourselves, we shall admit that the thing that turned the balance for us was not a very creditable thing—that we were protected from ourselves not by any high virtue, but by something mean, a touch of cowardice, a paltry ambition, a consideration that we should be ashamed to confess. ”

“ I shall try not to be unjust, but I see now that in seeking seclusion in that lonely cañon we thrust ourselves among the most lawless citizens of the state, and cut ourselves off from the very people we should have known. ”

“ If these questionings come from us with greater persistence, with a more imperious authority, if they divert us from the quest of lucre, life's only object in the eyes of most men, does it become us to complain? ”

“ We have been slaves all these years, trembling and shrinking under a villain's nod and frown. I've sold myself to a demon, who, in consideration of my services--of my body and soul--promised to keep his talons from my poor Lucy. ”

“ Among those most frank and fearless in the avowal of loyalty, and who suffered the severest penalties, were men of the noblest character and of the highest position. So, also, bearing the same odious title, were men of the most despicable nature, self-seeking and unprincipled, ready for any act of evil. ”

“ ANTHONY. And justice comes before it.
EDGAR. What seems just to one man, sir, is injustice to another.
ANTHONY. [With suppressed passion.] You accuse me of injustice—of what amounts to inhumanity—of cruelty?
[EDGAR makes a gesture of horror—a general frightened
movement.]
WANKLIN. Come, come, Chairman.
ANTHONY. [In a grim voice.] These are the words of my own son. They are the words of a generation that I don't understand; the words of a soft breed.
[A general murmur. With a violent effort ANTHONY recovers his control.] ”

“ Hardened and impenitent sinner! the measure of your iniquity is full: the 321 price of crime has been paid: here shall your spirit dwell for ever, and for ever. You have dreamed away life’s joyous hour, nor made atonement for error, nor denied yourself aught that the fair earth presented you. ”

“ Degraded by the form to which 'tis joined?"
What if I am rich, and another is poor—strong, and he is weak—intelligent, and he is benighted—elevated, and he is depraved? "Have we not one Father? Hath not one God created us?" ”

“ I have treated every unhappy creature kindly, and you know whether you received any harm from us, or if even a hair of your head were touched. I wished only to humiliate those proud voluptuaries who live in luxury and vice at the expense of suffering humanity ”

“ If I set myself to obtain wealth or power, does it mean that I must make up my mind to lie, and fawn, and cringe, and swagger, and flatter, and dissemble? To consent to be the servant of others who have likewise fawned, and lied, and flattered? ”

“ Many of the cruelties that can be prohibited by law—that is to say, those for whose prohibition the true and secret public feeling is ripe—are cruelties that come rather from lack of thought than from a natural savagery. ”

“ They keep us miserable now, and call us their property, but some of them will have enough of us by and by—their stomachs shall run over with us; they want us for their slaves, and shall have us to their fill. ”

“ Garrison, “that idolatry is not the habit of pagan countries.” What is cruelty? The extremest is the reducing of a human being to the condition of a domesticated brute, a piece of mere property. The Doctor himself has said as much in another part of this volume, see the 26th page in his excellent chapter on “Property.” Having described what man is by nature, he adds, “The sacrifice of such a being to another’s will, to another’s present, outward, ill-comprehended good, is the greatest violence which can be offered to any creature of God. ”

“ The body of the ascended hero placed the mild angel amid human hardships—amid human injustice. He was surrounded by the thorny girdle of allied governments,—that girdle which holds in its stinging grasp whole quarters of the globe, and which the mighty and the powerful never cease to tighten. ”

“ But rulers themselves under the sun are not free from folly, and this shows itself in the disorder that actually proceeds from them. Orders and ranks are not in harmony. Folly is exalted, and those with whom dignities accord are in lowly place. It is another view of the present confusion, and how fully the coming of the Highest showed it out! A stable, a manger, rejection, and the cross, were the portion under the sun of the King of kings. ”

“ And I saw that this was not a man who spoke, but the very self of the brute beast that lurks beneath the surface of{40} our State; the very self of the chained monster whom Nature tortures with the instinct for possession, and man with whips drives from attainment. ”

“ They’ll say that every man should have his turn, Both in his going forth and his return; And hereupon there shall arise such woes, Such jarrings, and confused to’s and fro’s, That never were in history such coils Set down as yet, such tumults and garboils. ”

“ In order to illustrate the nature of evils of this class, I may take two instances—cruelty and lasciviousness. That these are great intrinsic evils, we may, I think, easily assure ourselves, by imagining the state of a man, whose mind is solely occupied by either of these passions, in their worst form. ”

“ Many a notorious coward, many a chicken-livered poltroon, coarse, brutal, degraded, has made his dying speech without a quaver in his voice and been swung into eternity with what looked like the calmest fortitude, and so we are justified in believing, from the low intellect of such a creature, that it was not moral courage that enabled him to do it. ”

“ Do thou, therefore, keep thy high office to thyself, with the reward thou wilt have from it: seek not to share it with me; for even if all go well with thee, yet hast thou naught to carry home with thee but an ill conscience. And if thou art minded to obey that conscience, then wilt thou be quickly deposed from thy commands as incapable, for all the world as if thou too wert become a stupid calf. ”

“ Are we intelligible? Will those possessed by present tell us whether any bondage, any Bastille, can suggest ideas of more frightful tyranny, misery, than the cruel present, which clings to us, and cannot be removed. ”

“ How can men stand on their rights left?
JOURNALIST. I'm afraid you had a painful experience, sir.
BUILDER. Every kind of humiliation. I spent the night in a stinking cell. I haven't eaten since breakfast yesterday. Did they think I was going to eat the muck they shoved in? And all because in a moment of anger—which I regret, I regret!—I happened to strike my daughter, who was interfering between me and my wife. The thing would be funny if it weren't so disgusting. A man's house used to be sanctuary. What is it now? With all the world poking their noses in? ”

“ What energies a difficult crisis called forth! How her spirit and self-possession bore up in the midst of danger and insult, and how she contrived to preserve her dignity even while compelled to make the most humiliating concessions! ”

“ But the evils that surround us—that come to our knowledge and under our very eyes—are real and tangible and dreadful. So much the more reason for our being here;—but so much the less likely that you, gently reared and delicately cared for, will be allowed to risk your delicate nurture in this land of savages. ”

“ On hearing these noble sentiments fall from the lips of a person, once a slave, and in a manner most insinuating, with all the dignity of the most refined and cultivated person, and with an indignation expressive of the deepest abhorrence for the nefarious system of unmittigated, inhuman, chattelism. ”

“ But, at the same time, the vices of the human character had acquired a development proportioned to the vigour of men’s minds. Among the nobility, whom alone the laws seemed to protect, absolute power had produced its habitual effect,—an intoxication approaching to madness, and a ferocity of which later times afford no example. ”

“ Is it true, we may fairly ask, that these measures were such as no honourable man could in that age have adopted, and which it is therefore necessary to trace to the vilest of all origins—the desire of a half-successful statesman to root himself in place and power? ”

“ He stood on the corner and surveyed the familiar scene, the rushing, commonplace men, the commonplace horses, the commonplace, ugly walls and signs, and for an instant they lost substance, became as shadowy as drifting mist, the men were of no more bulk than phantoms, the walls and pavements but the effluvia of the commonplace perceiving mind. ”

“ There was always a good crop for the gallows: hanging went merrily on, from assize town to assize town, until one wonders whether the people were not gallows-hardened. One old man and his son performed the duties of warders in this filthy, abominable hole of "justice." ”

“ I have to consider on the one hand the grave nature of your offence, the deliberate way in which you subsequently altered the counterfoil, the danger you caused to an innocent man—and that, to my mind, is a very grave point—and finally I have to consider the necessity of deterring others from following your example. ”