HUDIBRAS

HUDIBRAS, Canto II.

Here are new views of utility; which, were they to be considered as of any weight, would increase the difficulty of determining when an erroneous promise ought to be kept.

But should views of utility be laid aside, and should it be made an invariable rule that truth is on no account to be violated, that deceit is never to be practised, and that moral obligations are not to be dissolved for the prospect of any physical advantage; those doubts which arise concerning the validity of erroneous promises will soon disappear. Disagreeable perhaps and ridiculous consequences may sometimes arise to a few individuals from an honest and conscientious adherence to their promise; but will any assert that the general good, that burden of the song, will ever be endangered by too much veracity.

So numerous inconveniences arise daily from the regular operation of those great physical laws, which are under the immediate direction of Providence, that those philosophers who have adopted the principle of utility, and are much surprised to see the universe so awkwardly planned for the ease and comfort of them and their species, have been under the necessity of imputing many events in nature to the malignity of some evil independent being; or of allowing that things have degenerated since they first came from the hands of the Creator, and that they must now be exceedingly altered from what they had been when He chose to pronounce them all very good. Thus, absurdity or impiety must

always be the consequence of judging of the vice Premised and virtue of an action by its utility, and of estimating its utility by our limited views and erroneous conceptions.

As for extorted promises, it is curious to observe how this question should always be started, whether or not they ought to be kept? and another question should seldom be thought of, whether or not they ought to be made? Fortitude was one of the cardinal virtues, Extorted promises among the ancients; and is deemed of such importance in the Christian system, that the fearful are classed with the unbelievers, and are thought unworthy of the favour of the Deity, as being incapable of supporting those trials to which heaven exposes the faithful as the truest test of Christian virtue.—If a person should want the necessary fortitude to be virtuous, it will be a poor excuse for his baseness, that he has added deceit to his cowardice: and surely it is not the business of morality, when it has found him guilty of one crime, to grant him a dispensation for committing two. The laws of jurisprudence, it will readily be allowed, cannot favour the claims of the promisee; because they ought never to lend their support to oppression and violence. But their acquittal, should he violate his faith, will by no means vindicate the character of the promisee. Their acquitting a woman from the charge of adultery, goes a short way in restoring the fair reputation of her innocence.

Let jurisprudence decide as it will, the man of honour and the generous patriot can never be brought to respect the person who, struck with a panic, could betray either himself or his friends. The magnanimous spirits who could die for the truth will view with contempt his pitiful deceit. Those unfortunate men who may suffer from that very distrust which the breach of his faith has begotten, will always detest him as a traitor and enemy; and heaven itself cannot be supposed to reward that soldier who deserts her cause, and relinquishes the post which she has assigned him, at the sight of danger.

If we once begin to accommodate morality to the dispositions and humours of mankind, it is hard to say where this species of complaisance will end. The degrees of timidity are so various, and some tempers by nature so yielding, that repeated importunity or an earnest request will extort a promise.

A young lady was frequently pressed by her dying husband to grant him a promise that she would not marry after his death. For some time she was able to resist with becoming spirit his absurd request; but upon his declaring oftener than once that he could not otherwise die in peace, she complied and promised. Too young, however, for this effort of continence, she afterwards listened to the addresses of a second lover, and found her heart insensibly engaged before she adverted to the impropriety of a new attachment. But proposals of marriage could scarcely fail to remind her of her promise and awaken her scruples. These she soon communicated to her lover, with her firm resolution to remain a widow, if the contrary measure, which she greatly preferred, and on which her earthly happiness depended, were not removed by some spiritual counsellor.

Upon this declaration it was agreed to take the advice of their own minister, who was an eminent dissenting clergyman

Promise clergyman in the diocese of Oxford: but this gentleman, unwilling to decide in a matter of such importance, proposed to refer it to Dr Seeker, who was then bishop of that see. This prelate too declined to give any judgement in the case; but, as was his way, mustered up a number of arguments on each side of the question, and committed them to a letter, which a learned gentleman of our acquaintance had some time ago an opportunity of seeing in manuscript.

If the sentiments to which the bishop was inclined could have been inferred from his statement of arguments, he seemed to think that the promise was binding. In our opinion, he ought to have a given positive decision. It was no matter whether the promise was extorted or not: the promise was made; and the question was now, whether or not was the performance lawful? That it was lawful appears evident. The lady was under a moral obligation to remain a widow; and no moral obligation, so far as we know, required her to marry.

To be fruitful and multiply, indeed, is declared in Scripture, and is found, to the woful experience of many, to be one of the general laws of our nature. But of all those laws intended by nature to regulate the conduct of inferior intelligences, the moral, which were meant to be checks and correctors of those abuses to which the physical are apt to be carried, are certainly the most sacred and obligatory. To procreate his species, a man is not then to be guilty of adultery, or of fornication, or to listen to the lewd calls of incontinency. St Paul's observation, that it is better to marry than burn, cannot be allowed in this instance to have much weight. He has not defined what degree of amorous inflammation constitutes burning, nor in what cases this burning would be a sufficient warrant for marrying. In the present instance he does not even consider marriage as a duty; he compares it with burning, and thinks it only the least of the two evils. Not that marriage is evil of itself; for he that marrieth doth well: but there are circumstances in which it would be inconvenient to marry, and in which he that marrieth not is said to do better. But if those inconveniences be reasons sufficient to deter from marrying, is that person to be held excusable who, in order to gratify an animal passion, somewhat refined, should violate an oath, and trample on a sacred moral obligation?

The young lady might indeed declare that her earthly happiness was at an end if she were not permitted to marry again: but what circumstance prevented her from marrying? It was not the opinion of her own pastor, or the bishop of Oxford: the truth is, it was certain scruples of her own, which being unable of herself to overcome, she had piously solicited the assistance of others. It is certainly a misfortune that a devotional and amorous turn should always be so closely connected in the females. Both, however, cannot always be indulged. Who will say, that the motive is rational which inclines one to cherish a passion which conscience disapproves? The virtue of continency might indeed have borne hard on this lady's constitution, and in her way to immortal happiness might have formed a gate so strait and narrow as it might be difficult for her to pass through: but after all, her case was not harder than that of nuns, who take the vows of perpetual chastity, and endure sufferings of a similar nature, and in some instances

even perhaps greater than hers; yet doing it cheerfully, from the supposition that the Omniscient is well acquainted with the nature of the great sacrifice which they make, and that after death he will study to requite them, and bestow on them something like an equivalent, which in their opinion can scarcely be less than a happiness in heaven as ample as their wishes and as lasting as their souls.

Every promise, therefore, which is not released, nor fraudulently obtained by the promisee, is to be held binding if the performance be lawful and possible.

The Christian cannot, and a man of honour will scarcely venture to reject this maxim, that a good man ought not to change though he swear to his hurt. Yet a simple promise and a promissory oath are not very different in point of obligation. Most people know, and where any moral duty is concerned, they ought particularly to reflect, that this world is governed by an Almighty Being, who knows all things, who lives always, and who is just to reward and to punish. The person who makes a promissory oath does it avowedly under an immediate sense of these truths; the person who makes a simple promise, though he certainly ought, yet may not reflect on these at the time. The former, when he violates his oath, exhibits, only to outward appearance, a greater contempt of the Divine power, knowledge, and justice, than he who violates a simple promise under an impression of the same truths. To Him who knows the secrets of the heart, the breach of the promise must appear as criminal as the breach of the oath. See ASSUMPSIT and OATH.