Remonstration

“ But against all this perhaps you have been told there is redress. Yes; a redress, that it is the consummation of insult so much as to name! Where shall the poor wretch reduced to the last despair, to whom acquittal perhaps comes just time enough to save him from perishing,—where shall this man find leisure, and much less money, to fee counsel and officers, and purchase the tedious dear-bought remedy of the law? No; he is too happy to leave his dungeon, and the memory of his dungeon, behind him; and the same tyranny and wanton oppression become the inheritance of his successor. ”

“ The principal objects which human punishments have in view, are undoubtedly restraint and example: restraint, or removal, of an individual member, whose vicious habits are likely to be prejudicial to the society. ”

“ If you would retribute what you seem to lament, and unite restitution to penitence, leave this country for a short time, and abandon with the haunts of your former blameable pursuits, those associates who were at once the cause and punishment of your errors. ”

“ This is the source of the erroneous excesses of Remorse and Revenge; the one extending itself over the future, and the other over the past; provinces in which their suggestions can only be the sources of evil. The purpose of a resolution to act more wisely and virtuously in future, and the sense of a necessity of caution in repressing an enemy, are the sources from which the enormous superstitions implied in the words cited have arisen. ”

“ But I would not press the matter upon you too severely; the reparation shall be left to your own discretion; but you must decide upon what it is to be, before the Court break up.
LATITIA.
⁠Decide so soon! Will not to-morrow do, or the day after to-morrow, or the day after that?
BRIGHTLY.
⁠No, neither to-morrow nor any following morrow will do; you must pronounce your own sentence before the Court break up.
LATITIA (going about in a bewildered manner) .
⁠O, dear! what can I do? what can I say? how shall I decide? ”

“ As ye ought to look on my example, so especially ponder that word and rule of practice and behaviour that I have left behind me, and given out as the lawgiver of the redeemed. Have I redeemed you, and should not I be the redeemed and ransomed one's king? Is there any society in the world wants a law, order, and government? Neither must ye who are delivered from bondage, enfranchised and made free indeed. ”

“ That ceremonial restraint, preceding other forms of restraint, continues ever to be the most widely-diffused form of restraint, we are shown by such facts as that in all intercourse between societies, civilized, semi-civilized, or barbarous, as well as in all intercourse between members of each society, the decisively governmental actions are usually prefaced by this government of observances. ”

“ And if all restraint is removed, it is as certain as fate that their condition will be far worse than it ever was before. It will be the old system, with all its mitigations rescinded and all its horrors intensified. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The omission of one renunciation is cancelled through a renunciation at some other point. This would lead us to conclude that, as far as taboo ceremonials are concerned, penance is more primitive than purification. ”

“ We charge you eftsoons that ye withdraw yourselves to your own houses every man, cause the provokers of you to this mischief to be delivered to our lieutenant’s hands or ours, and you yourselves submit yourselves to such condign punishment as we and our nobles shall think you worthy to suffer. ”

“ The whole plan is an attempt to compromise me, to force my consent.”
Into what a scheme had I been betrayed! The sweat rose to my forehead.
“Mademoiselle,” I cried, “for God’s sake acquit me of any such dishonor!”
“I do, Monsieur, freely.”
“I shall go back to du Trémigon and explain my appearance to him immediately. I shall compel him to give me satisfaction for this insult—an insult to you as well as to me. Your quarrel with him shall be mine. He will trouble you no more,” I added significantly.
“Your plan is vain, Monsieur. I know the Marquis du Trémigon. ”

“ The new scenes and occupations in which they are suddenly and abruptly placed, like the transplanting of a tree, make them pine and suffer for a time, until restraint becomes a habit, and in both body and mind the convict becomes a new man. ”

“ But when concession is made, when tears of penitence are wept, and when, in moments of returning confidence, that luckless tendency of temper is candidly confessed, and sincerely bewailed; when all the different acts committed under its influence, are acknowledged to have been wrong, how complete ought to be the reconciliation thus begun, and how zealous our endeavours for the future to avert the consequences of this sad calamity! ”

“ Then, exposed to the contempt, or, at least, the suspicion of those whose interest he had obtained by force of industry and probity, reduced to distress, soured by injustice, carried away by want, yielding, in fine, to these fatal derelictions, this man, almost restored, falls back again, and forever, to the bottom of the abyss from whence he had with so much difficulty escaped. ”

“ He spoke bitterly, for he was furious that he should have allowed his man to be forced into the surrender of his rights. Man-like, he felt the necessity of blaming his own derelictions on some one else. ”

“ Instead of marking down the offenders for future punishment, they inflicted worse punishment on us by making us thoroughly ashamed of ourselves. Lining up across the road, they bade us halt for a space, telling us that they had a bet to decide, and it must be decided at once. ”

“ One flogging, without the slightest stigma attaching to it, or reprimand, is the certain penalty of failure in his task. With hardihood or without it, I then had no chance, though, at all events, I acquired it, and that too, to such a degree, and I deemed the penalty so trivial, that I henceforth enjoyed a delightful sense of freedom and independence in its way. ”

“ But it is in vain, that I torment myself with endeavouring to extinguish the remorse I feel in attempting to induce the sacred laws, the monument of publick confidence, the foundation of human morality, to authorise dissimulation and perfidy. ”

“ When I turn my thoughts towards the melancholy catastrophe, the retrospect is agonizing in the extreme; but I look forward to whatever may be the result of this court-martial, with becoming deference and resignation, which can only proceed from a conscience void of the offence of a wilful guilt, and assisted by the Divine Power, I feel supported by the confidence of ever having acted on humane and honourable principles. ”

“ Another great torment is the continual clinking of the chains. It is indescribably irritating to the nervous, and reminds the prisoner at every turn that he is a pariah among his kind, “deprived of all rights.” ”

“ It is sufficiently clear that revenge, retaliation, atonement, expiation, are rules and motives, so far from deserving a place in any enlightened system of political life, that they are the chief sources of a prodigious class of miseries in the domestic circles of society. ”

“ He was in the best of tempers, and I worked strenuously to keep him so. My scheme had been so successful that its iniquity did not worry me. I have noticed that this is usually the case in matters of this kind. It is the bungled crime that brings remorse. ”

“ We knew that the world would consider such doings intentional, and that they would be a lasting stigma upon our name. There were some among us that rejoiced at it; but many shuddered instinctively at seeing ourselves re-enacting the deeds which have made the name of vandal the execration of all ages. ”

“ Is anything but a pleasant one, certainly; but my conscience is at ease as to my share of it. We keep the letter of the statute, you know, and that is enough. No one is bound to keep the spirit of a bad law, since evasion is the only means of bringing on its repeal. ”

“ Every act must needs be attended by consequences, and as these are usually of too far-reaching a character to be exhausted in the life of the doer of the action, they cannot but engender another person by whom they are to be borne. This truth is popularly expressed by the doctrine of transmigration, according to which individuals, as the character of their deeds may determine, are re-born as pigs or peacocks, beggars or princes. ”

“ One would think that if obliged to pronounce such a doom upon any, he would do it with tears—that he would retire into his closet, and throw ashes upon his head, and come forth in sackcloth, overwhelmed at the hard necessity which compelled the stern decree. ”

“ A command is the signification of a desire or wish, accompanied with the power and the purpose to inflict evil if that desire is not complied with. The person so desired is bound or obliged, or placed under a duty, to obey. Refusal is disobedience, or violation of duty. The evil to be inflicted is called a sanction, or an enforcement of obedience; the term punishment expresses one class of sanctions. ”

“ Professing to think of nothing but the renunciation, she had begun to construct an entirely impossible fabric of life on the basis of it. In this fabric Ashley played a large part; but no [Pg 131] fabric could stand in which both he and Jack Fenning played large parts; and Jack's part was necessarily large in any fabric built with the renunciation for its cornerstone. Else where was the renunciation, where its virtue and its beauty?
To see the impossibility of a situation and its necessary tendency to run into an impasse is logically the forerunner to taking some step to end it. ”

“ Yet you surely can but resign what you own, what--if need be--you could defend; the possession of which you could dispute anyhow with your adversary to the last gasp. Despair does not resign, it only lets go what can no longer be held. ”

“ That's an administrative rule, not a law—that we don't try to trace retrogression victims. It channels anger and greed into non-destructive acts. There are a lot of unruly emotions floating around, and as long as there are, we have to have a safety valve for them. Retrogression is the perfect instrument for that. ”

“ A merciless despot, who had never known the need for restraint in all these years, he was doomed by ironic fate to practise restraint in the very moment when his feelings had reached their most violent intensity. ”

“ The least she might expect would be to find her protectors dispersed, perhaps slain, and herself a captive,—held for an exorbitant ransom, and subjected to the hardships of life in the remote recesses of the mountains, and to indignities the very report of which might daunt the most reckless or the bravest. ”

“ For trifling offenses which in our day would be punished by a small fine or a few days' confinement, men, women, and boys were sent to this other end of the earth to serve terms of seven and fourteen years ”

“ These men were occupied in building a rampart to the Law, and holding the fortress against enemies without and dissensions within. Those ramparts might confine our actions within a narrow space, yet is it not well for all men to be kept perforce in the path of duty? ”

“ The retreat was in consequence determined on, to the great glee of our men, who were tired of inaction, and imagined they should feel their sovereign's sufferings less if engaged hand to hand with, the foe, in his service, than watching him as they had lately done, and dreading yet greater evils. ”

“ And what matter to the reformer, the agitator, the dreamer, though you stone him to death, or throw him to the lions, or clap him into a nineteenth-century prison and shut his mouth that way? He has handed on the sacred fire. Others will bear the torch; and he who is unencumbered will outstrip his fellows. The wrong must be put right. ”

“ The great chance, also, of being censured, even in those cases where we had laboured most industriously to merit approbation, broke the spring of all generous exertion, and, by teaching us to anticipate blame, as a matter of course, defeated the very purpose of punishment when it fell upon us. ”

“ It might have been done perforce, or under a misapprehension, or anything. And, in any case, the renunciation does not ensure your never wishing—or merely being willing if requested—to resume your rights.”
“Stuff, Cyril! Why should I wish to resume them?”
“Why should any one wish to be a king? ”

“ The 'Vengeance of the Law' is a phrase not easy to forget; but among humane and highly-civilized peoples the word Vengeance should be replaced by another, the best that I can think of is—Regeneration. ”

“ It is renunciation alone that makes one fearless." Yes, this is the land of renunciation.
The time will not permit me, and the circumstances are not fitting, to speak to you fully. I shall have to conclude, therefore, by pointing out to you that the Himalayas stand for that renunciation, and the grand lesson we shall ever teach to humanity will be renunciation. ”