In any other family dishonour, my father, I believe, had as nice a sense of shame as any man whatever; ----and neither he, nor, I dare say, _Copernicus_, would have divulged the affair in either case, or have taken the least notice of it to the world, but for the obligations they owed, as they thought, to truth. 
In any other family dishonour, my father would not have revealed the affair to the world; but he felt he owed an obligation to truth. 