Recusant

“ Well, my good fellow, if you should ever have need of discretion, understand that there are two sorts of discretion—the active and the negative. Negative discretion is that of fools who make use of silence, negation, an air of refusal, the discretion of locked doors—mere impotence! ”

“ In short, I reckoned that if I consented to appear a third time in a brief of this kind, I should have an easier task to excuse myself if a case turned up in which I felt I ought not to play the part of accuser. For as there is a limit to the granting of all favours, the best method of paving the way to obtain a right of refusal is by consenting to previous requests. I have now told you my reasons for acting as I did, and it is open to you to agree or dissent, but let me assure you that frank dissent will be no less agreeable to me than the sanction of your approval. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mr. BRADLAUGH: If the sentence goes against us, it is another matter; but if you should consent to give us time for the argument of this writ of error, we would bind ourselves during that time. I should not like your lordship to be induced to grant this request on the understanding that in the event of the ultimate decision being against me I should feel bound by that pledge. ”

“ A jury has decided against you; well, their verdict is wrong, but still they decided as they thought right, and it is against you. You have now an opportunity, on easy terms, of placing yourself in a much higher position than you ever could, by remaining here; which would only be imputed, by people who didn’t know you, to sheer dogged, wrongheaded, brutal obstinacy: nothing else, my dear sir, believe me. ”

“ Note, We live in a censorious world, and should cut off occasion from those who seek occasion to speak reproachfully. It is the crime of others if they reproach or censure us without occasion; and it is our imprudence at least if we give them any occasion, when there may not be a just cause for them so to do. ”

“ What excuse can you offer for being her destroyer? Dear madam, don’t use so severe an expression—Sir, I can use no other: How can you extenuate the fault, by which you merit so severe an appellation? To a lady of your rigid delicacy, madam, said he, perhaps what youth could offer, in extenuation of the fault, might appear but a weak plea: yet ’tis most certain, that I was surprized into the fatal error: I am under no promises, no ties, no engagements whatsoever to the lady. No ties, Sir! (interrupting him) Is your own honour no tie upon you, supposing you free from any other obligation? ”

“ Do not deceive yourself. You urge me to discretion in one breath and tax me with timidity in the next. While there was hope that they might call Beauregard back out of their own good sense, I was determined to say nothing to inflame them. Do you call that timidity? Now their intention is clear, and you've heard me speak this morning clearly also. And now you talk about discretion—you, who call what was discretion at the right time, timidity, now counsel timidity at the wrong time, and call it discretion. ”

“ A RULE OF LIFE
‘If you want to annoy an opponent thoroughly, and even to harm him,’ said a crafty old knave to me, ‘you reproach him with the very defect or vice you are conscious of in yourself. Be indignant ... and reproach him!
‘To begin with, it will set others thinking you have not that vice.
‘In the second place, your indignation may well be sincere.... You can turn to account the pricks of your own conscience. ”

“ Indeed, 'tis not thou who owest submission to them; but on the contrary they owe it to thee, and it is their duty to carry out thine orders. How cometh it then, that thou art so mightily affrighted at them? It is said, 'Unless thy heart be like iron, thou art not fit to be a Sovran.' But thy mildness hath deluded these men, so that they presume upon thee and cast off their allegiance, although it behoveth that they be constrained unto thy obedience and enforced to thy submission. ”

“ I replied, "Your Honor, what better reason could I have than those given you"? To which he answered, "Don't come to me and ask me to give you reasons for excuse from jury duty. You must serve; we want men that cannot get away from their business." ”

“ I am ready to forget my position as judge, and to give you my help, but you must see yourself that to prove the other side guilty of slander, you must prove yourself innocent. What I want from you is an informal and strictly confidential declaration, for the case against you is a serious one, and of such a kind as to require all your efforts to wipe off this blot upon your honour. Your enemies will not respect your delicacy of feeling. They will press you so hard that you will either be obliged to submit to a shameful sentence, or to wound your feelings of honour in proving your innocence. ”

“ You either request of him what is just and right, in which case he ought to do it, and it will be actually done without any solicitation, which in fact, shows distrust of his rectitude; or what you request is unjust, and then you insult him. You are either worthy or unworthy of the favour you implore; if worthy, he knows it better than you do yourself; if unworthy, you commit an additional crime in requesting that which you do not merit. ”

“ Whatever you have to propose, whatever you intend by me, let my assent be that of a free person, mean as I am, and not of a sordid slave, who is to be threatened and frightened into a compliance with measures, which your conduct to her seems to imply would be otherwise abhorred by her.—My restraint is indeed hard upon me: I am very uneasy under it. ”

“ But that does not diminish your Guilt—your Guilt stands in a very high and prominent point of view, and it is necessary for the Court to pass on you a severe punishment.
If you have the feelings you ought to have, and if your life has not been a life of hypocrisy throughout, you will try to obtain forgiveness for this high offence, and reflect that it is fortunate you did not carry your offence to its completion. ”

“ If you had used your prerogative with discretion, you might perhaps, though I confess I do not see how, have escaped the obloquy of the world. Into your domestic scene, where the interest is more lively, and the watch upon you more unremitted, it must have introduced alienation and distrust. As it is, I see you surrounded with dangers of a thousand denominations. Police has its eyes upon you; superstition will regard you as the familiar of demons; avarice will turn upon you a regard of jealousy and insatiable appetite. ”

“ To charge this gentleman with the dismission of any of his colleagues, can, after the strongest aggravations, rise no higher than to an accusation of having advised his majesty to dismiss him, and even that, my lords, stands, at present, unsupported by evidence; nor could it, however uncontestably proved, discover either wickedness or weakness, or show any other authority than every man would exercise, if he were able to attain it. ”

“ If I can show you that there is a doubt—a doubt of the faintest or slightest shadow—his lordship will tell you that I have the right to demand a verdict of ‘not guilty,’ and I say that such a doubt cannot but exist. ”

“ Against such permission, our Lord opposes his Swear Not At All! He who uses any oath, except what he is solemnly called by the magistrate to make, so far from being a Christian, he does not deserve the reputation, either of decency or common sense. ”

“ This is by no means a sufficient ground, for giving any name of reproach to any man: least of all is it a sufficient ground, for so black a term of reproach as this. The more evil it contains, the more cautious you should be, how you apply it to any one: to bring so heavy an accusation without full proof, being neither consistent with justice nor mercy. ”

“ And rebuke; convince and reprove such as contradict or gainsay, or neglect and do not receive the truth as they should, or retain it in unrighteousness—those who hear it not with such a believing and obedient mind and heart as they ought, but, instead of this (it may be) live in contrary practices, showing themselves stubborn and disobedient, and to every good work reprobate. Rebuke with all authority, as coming in the name of God, and armed with his threatenings and discipline, whoever make light of which will do it at their peril. Ministers are reprovers in the gate. ”

“ There were people in the middle of the last Century who had so little regard for decency, that they even interrupted those solemn hours of silence which are devoted, in our Courts of Justice, to ascertaining the guilt or innocence of persons whose lives are in question. ”

“ It murmurs to me with a weary sigh,
How sweet to enter in, to kneel and pray
With all the others whom we love so well!
All disbelief and doubt might pass away,
All peace float to us with its Sabbath bell. ”

“ The feelings of resentment and moral indignation are parts of our nature, to which the punishment of the offender affords them a legitimate gratification. Now, to this, I should reply that, in the first place, I do not admit that the desire for revenge, as usually understood, can ever be legitimate. ”

“ If they were faulty in some of the measures they took, while they themselves did not think so, who shall judge for them? You, Sir, who will judge every body as you please, and will let nobody judge you in your own particular, must not be their judge.—It may therefore be expected that they will stand out. ”

“ One is, by a free and unlimited confession to the Government of all the circumstances of the plot, so far as they have come to his knowledge, the parties interested, their several shares in the undertaking, with every detail of date and time, to sue for a pardon for himself—a grace which, I need scarcely say, I will use all my influence to obtain. ”

“ Those who thus set up for judges and censurers shall receive the greater condemnation. Our judging others will but make our own judgment the more strict and severe, Matt. vii. 1, 2. Those who are curious to spy out the faults of others, and arrogant in passing censures upon them, may expect that God will be as extreme in marking what they say and do amiss. 2. Another reason given against such acting the master is because we are all sinners: In many things we offend all, v. 2. Were we to think more of our own mistakes and offenses, we should be less apt to judge other people. ”

“ We plead guilty to a degree of sensitive annoyance—for the sake of the honor of our country, and its estimation in the public opinion of the world—which does not find even in satisfied conscience full consolation for the very necessity of seeking consolation there. ”

“ Every man within the sound of my voice must feel for my situation; but by you, gentlemen of the jury, it must be felt in a peculiar degree, who are husbands and fathers, and can fancy yourselves in my situation.—I trust that this serious lesson will operate as a warning to all future ministers, and lead them to do the thing that is right, as an unerring rule of conduct ”

“ And certainly do I owe it to those young gentlemen who have always conducted themselves uprightly, to carry out my decision in your case—or in any case where repeated infraction of our rules is the offense. ”

“ When he sought to excuse himself, saying that ‘this ought to be brought about by an order from his judges, and that those who condemned him must first revoke their sentence,’ they were only the more inflamed with the desire of seeing him reinstated, and of hearing him address them again. ”

“ My real feeling of reluctance lies deeper—it is, that favored as I have been by the public, I should be considered, with some justice, I fear, as engrossing a petty emolument which might do real service to some poorer brother of the Muses. ”

“ If an insult follows an unpolite expression,—if the aggressor considers himself offended, or if the person who has received the insult, considers himself insulted,—the case must also be referred to a meeting.
3. If in the course of a discussion, during which the rules of politeness have not been transgressed, but in consequence of which, expressions have been made use of, which induce one of the party to consider himself offended, the man who demands satisfaction cannot be considered the aggressor, or the person who gives it the offender. ”

“ This faculty of the mind, when it is exercised immediately about things, is called judgment ; when about truths delivered in words, is most commonly called assent or dissent : which being the most usual way, wherein the mind has occasion to employ this faculty, I shall, under these terms, treat of it, as least liable in our language to equivocation. ”

“ The qualification that the refusal must be 'willful' fully protects one whose refusal is made in good faith and upon grounds which entitle him to the judgment of the court before obedience is compelled. ”

“ One short extract will suffice:—
"The Master said, 'There are three thousand offences against which the five punishments are directed, and there is not one of them greater than being unfilial.
"'When constraint is put upon a ruler, that is the disowning of his superiority; when the authority of the sages is disallowed, that is the disowning of all law; when filial piety is put aside, that is the disowning of the principle of affection. ”