So strong is this habit of aggravating misery under
artificial circumstances, that it has been known, when in a sea-fight a
vessel has blown up, (here a long explanation was owed to Immalee, which
may be spared the reader), the people of that world have plunged into
the water to save, at the risk of their own lives, the lives of those
with whom they were grappling amid fire and blood a moment before, and
whom, though they would sacrifice to their passions, their pride refused
to sacrifice to the elements.”--“Oh that is beautiful!--that is
glorious!” said Immalee, clasping her white hands; “I could bear all you
describe to see that sight!”

  (15) As, by a mode of criticism equally false and unjust, the worst
  sentiments of my worst characters, (from the ravings of Bertram to the
  blasphemies of Cardonneau), have been represented as _my own_, I must
  here trespass so far on the patience of the reader as to assure him,
  that the sentiments ascribed to the stranger are diametrically
  opposite to mine, and that I have purposely put them into the mouth of
  an agent of the enemy of mankind. “Her smile of innocent delight, her spontaneous burst of high-toned
feeling, had the usual effect of adding a darker shade to the frown of
the stranger, and a sterner curve to the repulsive contraction of his
upper lip, which was never raised but to express hostility or contempt. “But what do the kings do?” said Immalee, “while they are making men
kill each other for nothing?”--“You are ignorant, Immalee,” said the
stranger, “very ignorant, or you would not have said it was for
_nothing_. Some of them fight for ten inches of barren sand--some for
the dominion of the salt wave--some for any thing--and some for
nothing--but all for pay and poverty, and occasional excitement, and the
love of action, and the love of change, and the dread of home, and the
consciousness of evil passions, and the hope of death, and the
admiration of the showy dress in which they are to perish. The best of
the jest is, they contrive not only to reconcile themselves to these
cruel and wicked absurdities, but to dignify them with the most imposing
names their perverted language supplies--the names of fame, of glory, of
recording memory, and admiring posterity. “Thus a wretch whom want, idleness, or intemperance, drives to this
reckless and heart-withering business,--who leaves his wife and children
to the mercy of strangers, or to famish, (terms nearly synonimous), the
moment he has assumed the blushing badge that privileges massacre,
becomes, in the imagination of this intoxicated people, the defender of
his country, entitled to her gratitude and to her praise. The idle
stripling, who hates the cultivation of intellect, and despises the
meanness of occupation, feels, perhaps, a taste for arraying his person
in colours as gaudy as the parrot’s or the peacock’s; and this
effeminate propensity is baptised by the prostituted name of the love of
glory--and this complication of motives borrowed from vanity and from
vice, from the fear of distress, the wantonness of idleness, and the
appetite for mischief, finds one convenient and sheltering appellation
in the single sound--patriotism. And those beings who never knew one
generous impulse, one independent feeling, ignorant of either the
principles or the justice of the cause for which they contend, and
wholly uninterested in the result, except so far as it involves the
concerns of their own vanity, cupidity, and avarice, are, while living,
hailed by the infatuated world as its benefactors, and when dead,
canonized as its martyrs. He died in his country’s cause, is the epitaph
inscribed by the rash hand of indiscriminating eulogy on the grave of
ten thousand, who had ten thousand different motives for their choice
and their fate,--who might have lived to be their country’s enemies if
they had not _happened_ to fall in her defence,--and whose love of their
country, if fairly analysed, was, under its various forms of vanity,
restlessness, the love of tumult, or the love of show--purely love of
themselves. There let them rest--nothing but the wish to disabuse their
idolaters, who prompt the sacrifice, and then applaud the victim they
have made, could have tempted me to dwell thus long on beings as
mischievous in their lives, as they are insignificant in their death. “Another amusement of these people, so ingenious in multiplying the
sufferings of their destiny, is what they call law. They pretend to find
in this a security for their persons and their properties--with how much
justice, their own felicitous experience must inform them! Of the
security it gives to the latter, judge, Immalee, when I tell you, that
you might spend your life in their courts, without being able to prove
that those roses you have gathered and twined in your hair were your
own--that you might starve for this day’s meal, while proving your right
to a property which must incontestibly be yours, on the condition of
your being able to fast on a few years, and survive to enjoy it--and
that, finally, with the sentiments of all upright men, the opinions of
the judges of the land, and the fullest conviction of your own
conscience in your favour, you cannot obtain the possession of what you
and all feel to be your own, while your antagonist can start an
objection, purchase a fraud, or invent a lie. So pleadings go on, and
years are wasted, and property consumed, and hearts broken,--and law
triumphs. One of its most admirable triumphs is in that ingenuity by
which it contrives to convert a difficulty into an impossibility, and
punish a man for not doing what it has rendered impracticable for him to
do. “When he is unable to pay his debts, it deprives him of liberty and
credit, to insure that inability still further; and while destitute
alike of the means of subsistence, or the power of satisfying his
creditors, he is enabled, by this righteous arrangement, to console
himself, at least, with the reflection, that he can injure his creditor
as much as he has suffered from him--that certain loss is the reward of
immitigable cruelty--and that, while he famishes in prison, the page in
which his debt is recorded rots away faster than his body; and the angel
of death, with one obliterating sweep of his wing, cancels misery and
debt, and presents, grinning in horrid triumph, the release of debtor
and debt, signed by a hand that makes the judges tremble on their
seats.”--“But they have religion,” said the poor Indian, trembling at
this horrible description; “they have that religion which you shewed
me--its mild and peaceful spirit--its quietness and resignation--no
blood--no cruelty.”--“Yes,--true,” said the stranger, with some
reluctance, “they have religion; for in their zeal for suffering, they
feel the torments of one world not enough, unless aggravated by the
terrors of another. They have such a religion, but what use have they
made of it?