GOOD INTENTIONS. Je ne garantie que mon intention, et non pas mon ignorance. THERE are not many occasions, in which force of character is more fully evinced, than when a man masters his resentment, and pardons an injury under which he is smarting, merely because it was on the offender's part, unintentional. Even in the management of our own affairs, we find it difficult thoroughly to forgive ourselves our own oversights, when they are productive of mischiefs that give a permanent colour to after existence. In those cases, therefore, in which such mischiefs occur from the mistaken efforts of others, it is not the desire to please or to benefit us that will screen the offenders from our displeasure; and they may think themselves lucky, if they are only browbeaten for their zeal, and escape retaliation, with a modest request to be less interfering for the future. The law, it is true (that perfection of human wisdom), allows intention to be pleaded in abatement of overt acts, and makes even the absence of evil intention a ground of acquittal, however dreadful the consequences to life or limb may have proved. Thus the man who fires at a partridge, and only kills his elder brother, is pardoned his bad shot, if he can manage to prove that his gun was mentally aimed at the bird, and not at the man. So, too, the facetious wight, who frightens a maidservant into insanity, by playing on her superstitious fears, is let off for a simple "who'd have thought it?" But then the law is an unimpassioned ens rationis, a stranger to flesh and blood, and fall their infirmities. It cares no more for the elder brother, or the maidservant, than for the man in the moon. Not, however, that the law is quite consistent on the point: for an assault is an assault, in its eyes, notwithstanding the beator's best intention towards the beatee, in administering to him the wholesome correction of which he stood in manifest need, and teaching him" to behave himself" for the future. So, also, the most patriotic intention of the libeller to run down a dishonest or incapable minister, to unmask a traitor, or to put a stop to malversations infinite, will afford him no protection. In this case, the tendency is every thing, and the intention nothing; and a tendency to the breach of the peace is therein plainly more severely punished than an actual breach, in which intention may be pleaded; so that it is often safer to calumniate one's neighbour, than to speak truth of him. But what, reader, is the worst possible breach of the peace (though that peace be our sovereign lady the Queen's), compared with the actual loss of an eye, carelessly inflicted by a good Samaritan, in an awkward effort to remove a mote? What is it to a real peppering with small shot, dealt to you by a shortsighted Benevolus, who mistook you for a scarecrow? The law, therefore, may decide on the matter as it pleases, but it never will persuade the sufferer that a little more malice, and a great deal less injury, would not have better suited his account. For our own part, therefore, if we do not believe that a certain place is paved (as some folks will tell you) with good intentions: it is not because we esteem the commodity too respectable for the service; but because we think too highly of the surveyor of the highways, là-bas, as a person of intelligence, to suppose him capable of employing so slippery a material, where his object is to make the passenger thoroughly sure of his footing. Every one, too, who knows what cold comfort good intentions afford, must be perfectly aware of their unfitness for the pavement of so hot a locality. In this nineteenth century of ours, it may seem almost superfluous to insist upon the point; but notwithstanding the imputed science of the age, it is astonishing how few people are aware of the fact, that these same dealers in good intentions are by far the greatest bores to which human life is exposed; that they do more to spoil our poor modicum of threescore years and ten (taking one life with another), than plague, pestilence, and famine put together. It is this triste vérité, nevertheless, that gives its pith to the well-worn proverbial prayer for a special protection from heaven against friends. He would be no bad philosopher who could satisfactorily explain why it is that good intentions so often fall short in their consequence, while the evil intentions of enemies never fail in reaching their aim. For, though it may happen once in a thousand times, that a blow with a dagger may open an imposthume, and so save the charge of surgeons,-or that the burning of your house may lead to the discovery of a treasure, which will more than repay the expense of rebuilding it; yet one swallow will not make a summer. Besides, such incidental benefits are mere ricochets, and have, or should have no influence on the character of the main action. Accordingly, a man would be mad indeed, who would submit his body to the dirk, or his house to the lucifer-match box, on the strength of such a possible contingency. Putting, however, these strange accidents on one side, as being quite beyond the sphere of calculation, there can be little mistake in expecting from the evil intentions of enemies the full complement of practical consequence. The tu me lo pagharai of Italian vengeance, is not a surer forerunner of a coming assassination, than the mischievous intention in more civilized life is to the mischievous effect. Never has it occurred to our young experience, to hear of a dunning epistle being turned aside by fate and metaphysical aid, into an invitation to dinner; nor can we charge our memory with a single case in which one, intending to run away with another man's wife, mistakingly married himself to her unportioned ugly sister. We cannot indeed tell what moralists mean about the designs of the wicked not prospering, of their evil recoiling on themselves. It has certainly not been our luck to stumble upon enemies, who went to work in the careless manner implied in these propositions. It must be a very fresh trick, indeed, that would be followed by such untoward consequences; and the world is too wide awake, to commit itself and its purpose by such heedless mismanagement. Without refining too far upon the difference between good and bad intentions, we are half-inclined to suspect that the weakness of the former is most commonly attributable to the lâchesse of the party offending; and to affirm that if folks took half the pains to oblige and serve their friends, that they do to harass and injure their enemies, they would be as successful in the former as in the latter case. A ge nuine hater will leave no stone unturned to wreak his vengeance; but rarely indeed can we detect this omnilapideversile propensity manifested in the friendly intender of benefit to others. There is indeed a perfunctory manner of conferring services, which is admirably adapted to ensure their failure, but which is rarely discernible in men's efforts to serve themselves. Now it is a received maxim of law, that no man is to benefit by his own lâchesse; and we cannot regard that person in any other light than as a dupe, who remains answered by a profession of the very best intention, and who by admitting an excuse so easily offered, carelessly opens a wide door to the repetition of the offence. Nature, in her comprehensive scheme of human happiness, has coupled our pains and pleasures with facts, and not with intentions. To what purpose, then, would it be that a man should surround himself with friends, and (as the saying is) should put his eyes upon sticks to captivate their good will, unless there were some proportionate relationship between the will and the deed? What difference, indeed, does it make to the sufferer, whether the evil comes from friend or foe, from a good or an evil motive; unless it be that the former is the least supportable. Of all the conspirators that joined in the murder of Julius Cæsar, Brutus alone had good intentions. All, save only he, Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar; And common good of all, made one of them. Yet Cæsar's pathetic "et tu Brute" stands on eternal record, as the most natural and touching reproach, that one man ever cast against another. Of all their daggers, Brutus's alone was drugged with a moral poison. How very little intentions merit consideration, is further evinced in the single fact that these must ever remain a matter of conjecture, or be received on the faith of the man's own testimony; whereas, according to the Scotch saw, "deeds show :" and herein lies the weak point of most writers of history, who give a few lines only to the setting forth a great political event, and bestow whole chapters on the vain attempt to detect the secret springs that moved the actors, and brought the matter to pass. What is the result? their argument at most reaches to placing before their readers un grand peut-être; while for the most part, their most elaborate guesses go only to a flagrant missing of the mark. After all the observation which has been thrown away by professed moralists on the motives of human action, the world is not much nearer the mark in its couplings of cause and effect, than the inventor of indictments, who referred all things not exactly according to Hoyle, from the levying war against our sovereign lady the Queen, down to taking the evening air on Blackheath, or to mistaking another man's house for your own, and his window for a door,-to the instigation of the devil. What a vastly good opinion, by the by, must the law have entertained of human nature, when it could not discover a weak point in its whole moral complex, upon which to charge the most paltry felony, but was forced to throw the entire responsibility on His Dark ness; thereby entailing on itself the niserable non sequitur of punishing the innocent in the place of the guilty. If the devil did the mischief, why in the devil's name, as the Germans say when they swear, not set loose the attorneys on him, instead of the prisoner at the bar? Surely it was not from any misgivings as to these gentlemen by act of parliament being a match for the real delinquent? But to return to our matter: the man must be a poor adept in his business, who has not a sufficiently good intention constantly ready to put forward in defence of the most abominable actions. If a tosspot is brought before the police, labouring under an exhilaration of spirits and titubation of foot unmatched by the condition of David's sow, would he be such a fool as to accuse himself of a disgraceful love of wine-bibbing? No, he would lay the matter on a too impressionable friendliness of disposition, which betrayed him into forgetfulness, on the casual falling in with an old acquaintance; or perhaps he would plead a touch of the cholera, and lay the sin on the medical necessities of the case; nay, it will be well if he does not directly exonerate all intoxicating liquors of the deed, and impudently attempt to mystify the magistrate out of his five shillings, by attributing the whole to" that glass of cold water," which he was imprudent enough to indulge in before leaving the tavern. So, when a gallant has inextricably engaged the affections of a fond foolish woman, and refuses to marry her, he never is honest enough to plead fickleness, a rich widow, or a love of mischief; but he has ready in his sleeve a letter from his untractable father to call him away, or an insuperable repugnance to bringing, by an indiscreet match, want and misfortune upon a confiding and too loving woman. We have it on record against Lieutenant-general Othello, when he was had up before the beaks for putting a pillow on his wife's head, instead of putting his wife's head on the pillow, that he laid the whole mistake to his excessive affection for the lady, which he said was a little more nice than wise-(" not wisely but too well"). Not a word of his unjustifiable dislike of Michael Cassio, not a syllable of his own selfconceit, not a hint at a hastiness of temper, particularly unbecoming in a military commander. George Barnwell, with an equal show of reason, might have attributed the undue familiarity with which he treated his uncle, not to a wanton desire to injure his respectable relative, but to the warmth of his affection for Miss Milwood, a lady whose susceptible feelings were all in favour of a good supper and a bottle of the best. If he had that day got a prize in the lottery, received a timely remittance from home, or stumbled on the old gentleman's strong-box, unencumbered by his presence, he would have been the last man in the world to have put him to such personal inconvenience. Might he not, therefore, have pleaded the concatenation of causes, an unlucky mal-arrangement of the eternal nature of things, which turned the kindest disposition and the best intentions in the world against him in short, it was more his misfortune than his fault; and if a jury persisted in hanging him, he would be the most misunderstood man who ever died midway between heaven and earth. In such cases, who is to decide, or how is the matter to be determined? Every man, after all, is the best, if not the sole judge of his own intentions, as alone knowing what really is passing within him; and if he is prone to deceit, are not we, on our parts, equally fallacious, in always thinking the worst? The most selfish rascal that ever burnt his neighbour's house to roast his own eggs, would have preferred cooking them at a smaller expense to the world at large, had a more appropriate fire been convenient. It is therefore an obvious prejudg ment and an unamiable prejudice, to jump at once from the act to the motive, and then punish the act for the sake of the motive. What, then, is the legitimate inference from these premises? Either that there is nothing in intention which renders it either good or evil, per se; or that if there be, it is the deed which gives it its qualification. Why indeed should any motive be called good, unless it be because it produces good acts—or why called evil, if it be not followed by any evil consequences? To appeal therefore from the deed to the action, is to run a-muck at the logic of the case, and to fly in the face of all definition. If any one doubts the truth of this inference, we only beg of him or her (for the ladies are strong upon the point of intentions) to call upon conscience, to declare upon its conscience, which would be preferable to live surrounded by the greatest rogues on earth, whose wicked designs were by some untoward event rendered ever abortive, or be blessed with a circle of the kindest-hearted friends, whose blundering awkwardness rendered their most virtuous intentions a source of endless annoyance to all within the sphere of their unlucky activity. Do not, however, let us hurry things to a precipitate conclusion. Think, reader, before you pronounce a definitive sentence; and the better to enable you to do so, we will put before you a specimen or two of well-intentioned pests, who are the torment of all about them. Let us begin with a great man, a minister of state, Lord Lightpromise, the kindest-hearted and the best-intentioned man in the world. You bring him a letter from his dearest friend, soliciting his protection for your son. He receives you in the most flattering manner, is warm in his eulogium on his correspondent, who he protests is the man he loves best on earth, thanks him for having procured the service of so worthy a subject for promotion, pledges himself to seize, as the French say, avec empressement, the first opportunity for advancing your boy, and so you take your leave. Well, sir, upon these hopes, you deprive your son of some bird in the hand of less brilliant plumage, and put him on a course of training for office that unfits him for all other pursuit. You thus lose the best years of the boy's life in idle expectation, and at the end of ten years my lord goes out of office, having in the interim, to redeem his promise, just done-nothing. Now in this there was no peculiar ill-treatment. His lordship had acted in the same manner to pretty nearly all his friends; for, in the first place, he had not much to give; that is, as the common people say, to give "free gratis for nothing at all;" and in the next, he held in his hand a list of undeniable expectants, the least considered of whom must be provided for, before he could appoint his own younger brother even to the honourable and lucrative office of a tide-waiter. Why then did he promise? Because he can never bear to give a denial to any man. He is anxious to spare you the pain of a direct refusal, and he fully intended, if the case should occur, to bear you in mind the first time he happened to find himself a free agent. |