They are enemies,deadly to themselves and to me and to you,till then;till then,while hope yet lasts,I will treat them as brothers fallen insane;--when hope has ended,with tears grown sacred and wrath grown sacred,I will cut them off in the name of God!It is at my peril if I do .With the servant of Satan Idare continue in partnership.Him I must put away,resolutely and forever;"lest,"as it is written,"I become partaker of his plagues."Beautiful Black Peasantry,who have fallen idle and have got the Devil at your elbow;interesting White Felonry,who are idle,but have enlisted into the Devil's regiments of the line,--k that my benevolence for you is comparatively trifling!What Ihave of that divine feeling is due to others,to you.A"universal Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society"is the one I mean to institute in these times,where so much wants protection,and is sinking to sad issues for want of it!The scoundrel needs protection.The scoundrel that will hasten to the gallows,why rather clear the way for him!Better he reach his goal and outgate by the natural proclivity,than be so expensively dammed up and detained,poisoning everything as he stagnates and meanders along,to arrive at last a hundred times fouler,and swollen a hundred times bigger!Benevolent men should reflect on this.--And you Quashee,my pumpkin,--(a bad fellow either,this poor Quashee,when tolerably guided!)--idle Quashee,I say you must get the Devil sent away from your elbow,my poor dark friend!In this world there will be existence for you otherwise.as the brother of your folly will I live beside you.Please to withdraw out of my way,if I am to contradict your folly,and amend it,and put it in the stocks if it will amend.By the Eternal Maker,it is on that footing alone that you and I can live together!And if you had respectable traditions dated from beyond Magna Charta,or from beyond the Deluge,to the contrary,and written sheepskins that would thatch the face of the world,--behold I,for one individual,do believe said respectable traditions,regard said written sheepskins except as things which you ,till you grow wiser,will believe.Adieu,Quashee;I will wish you better guidance than you have had of late.
On the whole,what a reflection is it that we can bestow on an unworthy man any particle of our benevolence,our patronage,or whatever resource is ours,--without withdrawing it,it and all that will grow of it,from one worthy,to whom it of right belongs!We can,I say;impossible;it is the eternal law of things.Incompetent Duncan M'Pastehorn,the hapless incompetent mortal to whom I give the cobbling of my boots,--and can find in my heart to refuse it,the poor drunken wretch having a wife and ten children;he withdraws the job from sober,plainly competent,and meritorious Mr.Sparrowbill,generally short of work too;discourages Sparrowbill;teaches him that he too may as well drink and loiter and bungle;that this is a scene for merit and demerit at all,but for dupery,and whining flattery,and incompetent cobbling of every deion;--clearly tending to the ruin of poor Sparrowbill!What harm had Sparrowbill done me that I should so help to ruin him?And I couldn't save the insalvable M'Pastehorn;I merely yielded him,for insufficient work,here and there a half-crown,--which he oftenest drank.And Sparrowbill also is drinking!
Justice,Justice:woe betides us everywhere when,for this reason or for that,we fail to do justice!beneficence,benevolence,or other virtuous contribution will make good the want.And in what a rate of terrible geometrical progression,far beyond our poor computation,any act of Injustice once done by us grows;rooting itself ever anew,spreading ever anew,like a banyan-tree,--blasting all life under it,for it is a poison-tree!There is but one thing needed for the world;but that one is indispensable.Justice,Justice,in the name of Heaven;give us Justice,and we live;give us only counterfeits of it,or succedanea for it,and we die!
Oh,this universal syllabub of philanthropic twaddle!My friend,it is very sad,when Christianity is as good as extinct in all hearts,to meet this ghastly-Phantasm of Christianity parading through almost all."I will clean your foul thoroughfares,and make your Devil's-cloaca of a world into a garden of Heaven,"jabbers this Phantasm,itself a phosphorescence and unclean!The worst,it is written,comes from corruption of the best:--Semitic forms lying putrescent,dead and still unburied,this phosphorescence rises.I say sometimes,such a blockhead Idol,and miserable White Mumbo-jumbo,fashioned out of deciduous sticks and cast clothes,out of extinct cants and modern sentimentalisms,as that which they sing litanies to at Exeter Hall and extensively elsewhere,was perhaps never set up by human folly before.Unhappy creatures,that is the Maker of the Universe,that,look one moment at the Universe,and see!That is a paltry Phantasm,engendered in your own sick brain;whoever follows that as a Reality will fall into the ditch.
Reform,reform,all men see and feel,is imperatively needed.