CHAPTER XIII.
“No, no: ’tis all men’s office to speak patienceTo those that wring under the load of sorrowBut no man’s virtue nor sufficiencyTo be so moral when he shall indureThe like himself. Therefore give me no counselMy griefs cry louder than advertisement.”Much Ado About Nothing.
“No, no: ’tis all men’s office to speak patienceTo those that wring under the load of sorrowBut no man’s virtue nor sufficiencyTo be so moral when he shall indureThe like himself. Therefore give me no counselMy griefs cry louder than advertisement.”Much Ado About Nothing.
“No, no: ’tis all men’s office to speak patienceTo those that wring under the load of sorrowBut no man’s virtue nor sufficiencyTo be so moral when he shall indureThe like himself. Therefore give me no counselMy griefs cry louder than advertisement.”Much Ado About Nothing.
“No, no: ’tis all men’s office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow
But no man’s virtue nor sufficiency
To be so moral when he shall indure
The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel
My griefs cry louder than advertisement.”
Much Ado About Nothing.
The next night, about the same hour, Charles Hamilton again betook himself to the cabin-prison of Appadocca, who resumed his narrative as he had promised.
“When I arrived at Jamaica, I proceeded at once,” he continued, “to San Domingo, where I knew there were many at that time to whom the world was as disgusting as it was to myself, and who, I judged, would be the proper instruments to aid me in my schemes. The French revolution had torn up whole families together, from the soil on which they had been rooted for generations, and had driven them to distant countries for protectionand subsistence. They had carried with them, to their new homes, a strong hatred for their then democratic country, in particular, and for the whole world in general. For suffering tends not to soften the feelings or expand the heart. Pain, either mental or bodily, sours the sweetest nature, and it requires the strongest fortitude to endure it without anger.—Even Zeno strangled himself when he had known pain.
“Among such men only who hated the world from having, like myself, experienced injustice, I thought I could live. When I arrived at San Domingo, I found that even my anticipations were exceeded. I found the exiles existing in a state of cynical philosophy, in the midst of the virgin forests that covered the island. They lived in rude huts, erected apart from each other, which they called boucans. There they passed their lives in the society only of their dogs, and of their apprentices or servants, that jointly aided them in the chase by which they subsisted.
“The instinct of active pleasure seemed entirely eradicated from their hearts; for after the day’s work was done, and they had killed the animal which promised them food for a few days, they usually stretched themselves on their bed of reeds, and sullenly smoked away their waking hours.
“This life was so congenial to one who had suffered much, that I should have settled myself with the others, amidst the solitude of the wilderness, and would have there prosecuted the studies with which my existence was so strongly wrapped, if I had not a vow to fulfil.
“How seductive soever I thought those boucans to be, I was obliged to abandon the idea of enjoying the calm quiet, which they promised, and to form a scheme to carry into effect the resolution which I had taken.
“I was not long in San Domingo, before I met some of my fellow students of the French University, who, as belonging to the old aristocracy, were banished from France. I found them disgusted with the arduous life which they were obliged to lead, and fretting over the destiny which had, with so little justice, deprived them of so much at home, to allow them so little in their new country. I availed myself of their impatience, and proposed to them a life which was by far less monotonous than that which they then followed, and which, beside, was attended with greater gain—to say nothing of the opportunity which it would afford of avenging themselves on men, and not on harmless brutes. They received my proposal with acclamation.
“On the spur of the moment we procured a vessel. Iwas elected captain, and we went in search of adventures on the high seas. I led my followers on wrecklessly in action, and at other times, I kept them under an iron discipline. The success of my enterprizes gave greater weight to my position, to which I had been elevated, only from a great respect with which it seemed they regarded my character. I was consequently enabled to develope my original plan more and more. The time at last arrived—I sailed to Trinidad.
“By going ashore in disguise, and by a variety of other means, I learnt that my father was about to take passage in a ship for England. I watched the sailing of the vessel, and captured her some days after her departure. Then I effected that which I had designed, and attempted to make him undergo the same miseries, to which he had subjected me. Chance, however, seems to have rescued him; and, as you see, through his instrumentality I am now a prisoner.”
“And I hope, Emmanuel,” said the young officer, “you will now consider your vow as performed, and will cease to follow up this course of unnatural enmity to him who gave you life.”
“Cease!” exclaimed Appadocca, “cease! men of my cast never ‘cease!’ What I do, I do from reason: and as long as I am under the domination of that power, youneed not fear that I shall ever ‘cease.’ I have long buried impulse, and I endeavour to act up to the dictates of the mind. Do not imagine that I could have sacrificed my life—by the ordinary standard of existence but only half spent—and devoted it to the attainment of an end, and then stop, and fold my arms because a slight accident has happened to cross me in my schemes. No—no. Be it again recorded that I now renew the vow which I made twelvemonths ago. I again devote my life to the vindication of that natural law which has been violated in....”
“Stop! Emmanuel,” cried the young officer, with warmth, as he stood quickly up, and grasped the uplifted arm of Appadocca, “do not—for G—d’s sake—for my sake—for your own sake, make another diabolical vow. Emmanuel, you must know you cannot but afflict your friends by choosing to remain in this unfortunate mesh in which you have entangled the intellect and the heart that God has granted to you. I curse the day that the name of this father of yours was ever made known to you; it has led you to the perversion of your natural faculties, to the branding of yourself with the stigma of parricide—against which all nature revolts—and to your flying in the very face of Heaven.”
And the officer seemed deeply afflicted.
The captain still maintained his calm indifference, and, after the lapse of a few seconds, said—
“Parricide—hum! and what would you have called, perchance, the act of the father if the child had actually died of starvation? what if life had ebbed from sheer inanition? You look only on the right of the parent and not on that of the child, who, be it said, has a double claim—a claim that nature gives him, and one which he inherits from the measure of kindness and protection that his grandfather manifested to his immediate progenitor when he himself was the child. You say, too, that all nature revolts against the parricide—as you call it: error,—nature revolts only against injustice. All things are entitled to a certain measure of justice; and the natural contract between parent and child is based on the condition that, as the former has loved the latter, and protected its infancy, the latter, will yield obedience, honor, and respect, and gratitude to him. Where the condition be not fulfilled, the contract, by necessity, ceases, the child becomes absolved from his obligation; and if he resents more than ordinary wrongs that may have been done to him, he can assume, with all approbation of moral philosophy—nay, nature calls upon him to undertake the office of avenger, and to vindicate her law. I am no parricide!
“You need not fear that I shall prostitute the faculties with which you are pleased to say God has gifted me; and, as for my flying in the face of Heaven, in that respect you deceive yourself.
“I war not against God. On the contrary: recognise in me but the mere tool of His justice. To believe that the Almighty could thus look on, on crimes, and tie the hand of the avenger, is to suppose no just God. No—no, the only difference between your sentiments and mine are, that you imagine He reserves his rewards and punishments to be meted out in Heavens and in hells—and I, on my part, can demonstrate, and consequently must, and do believe that he uses a less cumbrous machinery, and makes law—law which he instituted and impressed on things,—the regulator of his creation, and the vindicator of itself. No: as long as I live, I shall make it the end of my existence to prosecute the unworthy author of my days, until the world shall learn by a dire deed that it is contrary to justice to give life to a sentient being, then abandon it; and that all organised creatures are endowed with sensibility to make them feel, and spirit to make them resent injuries.”
“You have sunk yourself,” replied the officer, who seemed more inclined to follow out his own opinions, than to give ear to the arguments of Appadocca, “sufficientlydeep in crimes, Emmanuel, without taking any additional vows to load yourself more heavily with them. You may have suffered grievous injuries, I do not gainsay, but why should privations have led you to the vile course of robbing and thieving?”
“Robbery and thieving?”
“Yes, robbery and thieving: for how otherwise can I designate piracy?”
“Ha! I see,” replied Appadocca, controlling himself, “I see you have either not gone far enough into philosophy, or that you blind yourself to its lights. If I am guilty of piracy, you, too—the whole of mankind is guilty of the very same sort of crime.”
“What do you mean by this?” asked Hamilton.
“Simply, that which my words convey,” replied Appadocca.
“Perhaps you will explain yourself more amply?” suggested Hamilton.
“Well,” rejoined Appadocca, “what I mean is plain enough, and it is this, that the whole of the civilized world turns, exists, and grows enormous on the licensed system of robbing and thieving, which you seem to criminate so much. The barbarous hordes, whose fathers, either choice or some unlucky accident, originally drove to some cold, frozen, cheerless, andfruitless waste, increasing in numbers, wincing under the inclemency of their clime and the poverty of their land, and longing after the richer, and more fertile, and teeming soil of some other country, desert their wretched regions, and with all the machinery of war, melt down on the unprovoking nations, whose only crime is their being more fortunate and blest, and wrench from their enervated sway the prosperous fields that first provoked their famished cupidity. The people which a convenient position, either on a neck of land, or the elbow of some large river, first consolidated, developed, and enriched, after having appropriated, through the medium of commerce, the wealth of its immediate neighbours, sends forth its numerous and powerful ships to scour the seas, to penetrate into hitherto unknown regions, where discovering new and rich countries, they, in the name of civilization, first open an intercourse with the peaceful and contented inhabitants, next contrive to provoke a quarrel, which always terminates in a war that leaves them the conquerors and possessors of the land. As for the original inhabitants themselves, they are driven after the destruction of their cities, to roam the woods, and to perish and disappear on the advance of their greedy supplanters. Nations that are different only in thelanguage with which they vent their thoughts, inhabiting the same portions of the globe, and separated but by a narrow stream, eagerly watch the slightest inclination of accident in their respective favours, and on the plea, either of religion—that fertile theme, and ready instigator—or on the still more extensive and uncertain ground of politics, use the chance that circumstances throw into their hands, make incursions and fight battles, whose fruits are only misery and wretchedness. A fashion springs up at a certain time to have others to labour for our benefit, and to bear ‘the heat and burthen of the day’ in our stead: straightway, the map of the world is opened, and the straggling and weakest portions of a certain race, whose power of bodily and mental endurance, renders them the likely objects to answer this end, are chosen. The coasts of the country on which nature has placed them, are immediately lined with ships of acquisitive voyagers, who kidnap and tear them away from the scenes that teem with the associations of their own and their fathers’ happiness, load them with irons, throw them into the cruel ordeal of the ‘middle passage,’ to test whether they are sufficiently iron-constituted as to survive the starvation, stench, and pestilential contagion which decide the extent of the African’s endurance, and fix his value. This, my dearfriend is an abstracted idea of the manner in which the world turns. But, as we used to say when we were younger, and happier, ‘in generalibus latet fraus,’ allow me to descend to particulars, and to bring my observations more closely home to society as now constituted. In all the various parts which form its whole, you will be able to trace the same spirit to which I impliedly referred in viewing the conduct of congregated individuals,—nations. You find those whom fortune has called to the first place in the state, instead of exerting their intellect to the utmost stretch, and expanding their heart to its greatest width, for the wise and virtuous government, and for the development of the happiness of those who are subjected to their rule, wasting their time in the pursuit of the most shadowy gewgaws, squandering, in empty vanities, the tax-extorted treasures of their subjects—treasures that could have preserved the flame of many a light of humanity, whose doom it has been to flicker for a moment in a garret, and be for ever extinguished; or pampering their already over-fed bodies to the point that sensitive reason refuses to longer hold together with such masses of matter. Those again in secondary spheres, use the authority with which they are invested, not with the keen discernment of delicate justice, but on the spur and press of passion.Is there some conquered people to be governed?—they send their weak-minded, afflicted, and helpless friends or relatives to govern those whose ancestors gave philosophy, religion, and government to the world, but who must now themselves stoop, to cut wood, and to carry water, when, by the common rules of justice, they should be permitted to enjoy the land from which they have sprung, and to participate in its dignities.
“What villainous case is there, that with the ready fee, does not find the well-turned and silvery measures of the orator to palm it forth. The widow’s mite, or the prince’s prerogative, may depend upon the issue,—’tis all the same. Poverty and utter want may follow the words of the cunning speaker, and rascality and villainy may rise triumphant,—what matters it?
“At the side of suffering humanity stands the willing doctor, and plies, and plies the rich patient with make-show drugs.
“From the pulpit invectives flow, for the voice of religion; charity yields to controversy; the denunciation of other’s condemned and re-condemned errors supply the place of the practice of benevolence; and in the name of that Christ, who came with ‘peace and goodwill to man’, evil passions are roused, daggers whetted, and massacres sanctified; while he, who, with spectacles on nose,and twang in voice, moves the ready machine, grins in his closet over the glittering gold that his lectures, invectives, panegyrics, and homilies, bring in.
“This is not all. Are you hungry? the baker sends you bread compounded with pestilential stuffs, grows rich, visits the church, sympathises with heathen savages, and sends delegates to call them within the bosom of his sweet civilization. Are you thirsty? the herb that nature furnishes you for your refreshment is taken and turned, and painted, and fried till it becomes poison, and then given you with balmy smiles.
“The world can be compared to a vast marsh, abounding with monster alligators that devour the smaller creatures, and then each other.”
“Apply your argument, Appadocca,” said Hamilton, “for I do not properly feel its force.”
“The application follows, naturally, my dear Charles,” replied Appadocca. “It is this: If I take away from the merchant whose property very likely consists of the accumulation of exorbitant and excessive profits, the sugar which by the vice of mortgages he wrings at a nominal price from the debt-ridden planter, who, in his turn, robs the unfortunate slave of his labour, I take what is ethically not his property, therefore, I commit no robbery. For, it is clear, he who wrenches awayfrom the hands of another, that which the holder is not entitled to, does no wrong.”
“Hum,” groaned Hamilton, “nice distinction.”
“To myself I am unstained,” continued Appadocca, “notwithstanding the necessity that made me require the aid of expediency. No man can say that Emmanuel Appadocca ever fed his pirates with the lawful property of any one.”
A considerable pause ensued.
“But it strikes me, Emmanuel,” said Hamilton, resuming the conversation, “you forget, in your observations, that commerce, and the voyages which you seem to censure so much by implication, are the proper stimulants to civilization and human cultivation.”
“A very vulgar error, my dear Charles, and quite unworthy of your father’s son,” replied Appadocca. “The human mind does not require to be pioneered by Gog and Magog in order to improve. It is not in the busy mart, not at the tinkling of gold, that it grows and becomes strong; nor is it on the shaft of the steam-engine which propels your huge fabrics to rich though savage shores that it increases. No: there it degenerates and falls into the mere thing whose beginning is knack, whose end is knack. The mind can thrive only in the silence that courts contemplation. It wasin such silence that among a race, which is now despised and oppressed, speculation took wing, and the mind burst forth, and, scorning things of earth, scaled the heavens, read the stars, and elaborated systems of philosophy, religion, and government: while the other parts of the world were either enveloped in darkness, or following in eager and uncontemplative haste the luring genii of riches. Commerce makes steam engines and money—it assists not the philosophical progress of the mind.”
“I cannot admire this strange and extraordinary theory, Emmanuel,” answered the young officer, evidently disposed to terminate this startling conversation.
“You may call it strange and extraordinary, if you please,” answered Appadocca; “but it is not the less true on account of its novelty: it is scarcely to be expected to commend itself to the world I know, because, forsooth, it is new and strange: although the systems and notions which are now as familiar as household terms, were, once upon a time, quite as new, strange, and extraordinary. Mankind is doomed to draw its venerative and uninquiring self along. Science cannot accelerate its unwilling movements. For my part, I shall cling to my own doctrine, and shall give an account of my actions to a Supreme Being, when the time arrives to do so.”
“Well, well, I shall not discuss such points with you,” replied the officer, “I cannot congratulate myself on possessing wits sharp enough to cut through your strings of subtilities, I give up, therefore, these unprofitable points: my instincts, I must declare, are against piracy.”
“Instincts, indeed!” partly interjected Appadocca, “another stumbling block, and obstacle to science. There are no such things as instincts in man: he alone is distinguished from the rest of organic beings by the indefiniteness of his mind and sensibilities. The habits in which men are brought up, the notions of ignorance which they have compounded and adopted they call instincts, and thus saddle wise and good nature with an amount of absurdities that would make her blush, if she were conscious of the faults which she is made to bear on the ground of having implanted, in the human breast, feelings which are as ridiculous as they are false. As for you, Charles, I am somewhat surprised at you. It is clear you have not improved since you left the university. The time that you had for contemplation during your student’s life, ought to have produced better fruits than an unconditional adoption of the vague notions of the unreflecting, as soon as you found yourself among them.
“Pardon the freedom with which I speak—our friendshipalone has made me depart from the usual silence which I invariably maintain.”
“No—no apology is necessary, my dear Emmanuel—I know you—I know you! Besides, we have always observed, that those who are endowed with a certain amount of intellect, like the pendulum of a clock, are liable to go as far from a given centre, in one direction as in the other. But let us drop this topic, and think of your safety. I have heard your story, and really I am not surprised that such a sensitive individual as you should have been driven by so much injustice to a course which, with all my sympathy towards you, I cannot but denounce. Appadocca, we have seen happy and innocent days together, before either injury had driven you into—into—crime, or the business of the world had thrown part of its cares upon me: I could not stand with my arms folded and see you tried like a malefactor, and, perhaps, end your life under the hands of a vile hangman: I have formed a plan to facilitate your escape.”
“A plan to facilitate my escape?”
“Yes, I am in high command on board this ship, and I have men who are devoted to me. This very night you will be put on shore.”
A pause ensued,—in which Appadocca seemedburied in deep reflection; while Charles Hamilton, quite surprised by the coldness manifested on the announcement of what he considered the happiest news to a prisoner,—the prospects of escape—grew gradually pale, and paler as the truth began to break upon him that his friend, from some strange doctrine of his own, might obstinately refuse to consult his safety, and to avail himself of the means of escape, which Hamilton could lay in his power.
After the lapse of a few minutes, Appadocca grasped the hand of the young officer.
“No, no,” he said, “Charles, I esteem you too much, and venerate the law of nature too much, to avail myself of this kindness. Recollect that confidence is placed in you; you are bound to use it scrupulously, else retribution will surely follow any breach of it. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your good intention, but I cannot,—I will not accept your offer. If I escape, I shall do so without compromising any person, least of all, one of my oldest, and most esteemed friends.”
“I was not aware,” replied the young officer, somewhat piqued, “that I required to be reminded of the confidence which is here placed in me: be not, however, so foolish as to refuse my offer, let me entreat you.”
“Do not press me.”
“I stake my friendship on your acceptance,” said the officer with some determination. “He who refuses the good offices of a friend when he requires them, especially in a case of life and death, can have no proper feeling for him who proffers them, and he is, to boot—a fool. Good night, Emmanuel,” continued the officer, getting up, somewhat angry, “I give you until to-morrow to think of what I have offered.—Good night.”
The officer went out of the cabin, and Appadocca was left by himself.