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Untitled Article
that creeping , cringing abjectness which they well remember to have practised themselves ; and they well remember how enviable , in their eyes , was the honour and happiness of the individuals to whom such bowing and cringing were devoted : it is now their
summum bonum . It is all pure Englishism this ; doing things in order , according to custom . The best value of wealth to them is the power and command over others which it gives ; the privilege to order imperiously , instead of requesting kindly ; to be authoritative , instead of complying .
. Again , I say , the whole tendency of our systems of education , is an inculcation of respect for the great and wealthy , be the individual objects of that respect the most senseless or base of the community , or otherwise ; and to desire and to obtain riches * There are precepts enough to the contrary , I know , but who is affected by them ? 'One man picked out of ten thousand ; ' and that one is put under quarantine by all the rest;—he is in the € world V Lazaretto ,
It may be a question whether tyranny and harshness excite that which makes their exercise dangerous to the tyrant , more frequently in a blind and degraded man , or in him who thinks , reasons , and decides . One thing is pretty certain , that if retribution be sought at all , the reasoning man will select the proper object ; the other will strike randomly , and often revenge himself on the innocent , on the fancied cause ; he will make the
instrument of an act of tyranny his victim oftener than he will take the master who sets the instrument at work . As , not long since , a soldier , for whom the happy and skilful invention of his commanding officer had contrived a mode of punishment which should not subject himself to the lash of those cursed newspapers that have got a vile knack of showing up a flogger , driven to despair or madness , shot the corporal who superintended the torture
devised by this honourable subterfuge . It was wrong , wickedly , as well as foolishly wrong , to shoot any one ; but it was a greater wrong to take a wrong aim . This fact is good , strong argument for keeping men from exercising their reason , for drying up their powers of thinking : why tyranny would languish unto death for lack of stimulus , if it discovered it had none but reasoning creatures on whom to exercise itself .
Another digression , reader—wandering and irregular—it is a trick which I cannot leave off . I saw , as I was gliding down on my life ' s stream , something on the banks , and jumped out of my boat to examine it more closely : further on , a rock , flower , serpent , or tree , invited my attention , and I must look at them . Then I ascended the tree , and perhaps you lost me among the branches and foliage : still 1 had my eye on the boat the whole time . I will leap down , re-embark , up grapnel , and away again . Thank Heaven , my stay on board the Salvador was of short duration , I little cared whither , or to what ship I was sent , when
Untitled Article
Autobiography of Pel . Verjuice . 827
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1833, page 827, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2628/page/23/
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