256 Coiiversazione. [[Sept. 



apt to call that licentiousness, ■which is only the natural consequence of 

 the position in which they voluntarily place themselves. The higher 

 the monkey climbs, says the adage, the more he shews his tail ; and if 

 a man places himself upon an elevated pedestal, he has no right to ex- 

 pect he should escape observation, like his fellow citizen who walks 

 along in the crowd. The world will look, and stare, at a conspicuous 

 object ; it will laugh and sneer, if there be any thing mean or ridiculous 

 in the appearance of that object j and it will revile the object, if it be 

 loathsome and offensive. What then ? The object is a free agent, and 

 if it like not the laughter, the sneers, or the reviling, let it get off the 

 pedestal. On the other hand, if it know that it is neither ridiculous nor 

 odious, it will also know that neither splenetic mirth, nor envious re- 

 proaches, can make it so. It is a humane maxim of British jurispru- 

 dence, that it were better ninety-nine guilty should escape, than one 

 innocent man perish ; and, by a parity of reasoning, I am prepared to 

 maintain, that in a free country, it is incalculably less injurious that 

 good men, filling high offices of public trust, should be exposed to uxi- 

 founded calumnies, than that one bad man should lord it over us in the 

 impurity of a despotism that makes truth afraid of her own voice. It 

 may seem like an illogical and an ungenerous conclusion, but I do firmly 

 believe, that no man is an enemy to the freedom of the press, who does 

 not live in secret fear of its power. It is the dread of what it may, 

 some time or other, do to himself, arising from the consciousness that 

 there is a something which it can do, that makes him impatient of its 

 functions, and eager to circumscribe them. 



Mr. D — n. I do not agree with you there; for we should be selfish 

 beings, indeed, if we could look with indifference upon the perpetration 

 of injustice towards others, because we feel secure ourselves. 



Mr. Mc. F — r. And yet it Mould be difficult to prove that self-love 

 and social are not the same. But we will not grow metaphysical. It 

 is enough for me, that I have sesn, in my own time, the purest charac- 

 ters slandered in silence, and the most tainted ones loud in their indig- 

 nation at the breathing of a whisper, or the pointing of a finger. It is 

 not your sti'ong garrisons that take up arms and sally forth when a strag- 

 gler, who may be a spy, is peering about the walls : but a vulnerable, 

 ill-defended post, is easily alarmed, calls out for assistance, and, by the 

 aid of others, not by its own strength, drives av/ay the danger. When 

 all is done, however, unless those vho came to its aid, remain, the place 

 is still " heinously unprovided" with the means of defence, and hardly 

 worch the defending by such efforts. 



Capt. M — n. This is a dry subject. Pray what is your opinion of 

 Platonic love ? 



^A loud laugh followed ihis questmi, which was succeeded 6y sundry 

 disquisitions upon the nature of love in general, the harem of the Giand 

 Seignior, the height of the Falls of Niagara, and the source of Ihe Niger. 

 A little gentleman, in black, with a pale face and a red 7iose, which looked 

 like a strawberry in a bond of cream, mas 2}articularly eloquent vpon the 

 efficacy of sugar-candy in sweetening the blood ; when the ivatchman cried 

 twelve o'clock, and spru7ig his rattle. The former was a hint, and the 

 latter a motive, to take our departure, which we accordingly did ; running 

 over in our mind, as we ran alo7ig Bond-street and Piccadilly, all the good 

 things we had heard about Lord Stanhope and the liberty of the press, 

 Platonic love, the Falls of Niagara, sugar-ca7idy, a7id the hare7n at 

 Sta7nboul.'\ 



