Lavengro by George Borrow (read me a book txt) 📕

Second. It is lawful for anyone to use his fists in his own defence, or in the defence of others, provided they can’t help themselves; but it is not lawful to use them for purposes of tyranny or brutality. If you are attacked by a ruffian, as the elderly individual in Lavengro is in the inn yard, it is quite lawful, if you can, to give him as good a thrashing as the elderly individual gave the brutal coachman; and if you see a helpless woman⁠—perhaps your own sister⁠—set upon by a drunken lord, a drunken coachman, or a drunken coalheaver, or a brute of any description, either drunk or sober, it is not only lawful, but laudable to give them, if you can, a good drubbing; but it is not lawful because you have a strong pair of fists, and know how to use them, to go swaggering through a fair, jostling against unoffending individuals; should you do so, you would be served quite right if you were to get a drubbing, more particularly if you were served out by someone less strong, but more skilful than yourself⁠—even as the coachman was served out by a pupil of the immortal Broughton⁠—sixty years old, it is true, but possessed of Broughton’s guard and chop. Moses is not blamed in the Scripture for taking part with the oppressed, and killing an Egyptian persecutor. We are not told how Moses killed the Egyptian; but it is quite as creditable to Moses to suppose that he killed the Egyptian by giving him a buffet under the left ear, as by stabbing him with a knife. It is true that the Saviour in the New Testament tells His disciples to turn the left cheek to be smitten, after they had received a blow on the right; but He was speaking to people divinely inspired, or whom He intended divinely to inspire⁠—people selected by God for a particular purpose. He likewise tells these people to part with various articles of raiment when asked for them, and to go a-travelling without money, and take no thought of the morrow. Are those exhortations carried out by very good people in the present day? Do Quakers, when smitten on the right cheek, turn the left to the smiter? When asked for their coat, do they say, “Friend, take my shirt also?” Has the Dean of Salisbury no purse? Does the Archbishop of Canterbury go to an inn, run up a reckoning, and then say to his landlord, “Mistress, I have no coin?” Assuredly the Dean has a purse, and a tolerably well-filled one; and, assuredly, the Archbishop, on departing from an inn, not only settles his reckoning, but leaves something handsome for the servants, and does not say that he is forbidden by the gospel to pay for what he has eaten, or the trouble he has given, as a certain Spanish cavalier said he was forbidden by the statutes of chivalry. Now, to take the part of yourself, or the part of the oppressed, with your fists, is quite as lawful in the present day as it is to refuse your coat and your shirt also to any vagabond who may ask for them, and not to refuse to pay for supper, bed and breakfast, at the Feathers, or any other inn, after you have had the benefit of all three.

The conduct of Lavengro with respect to drink may, upon the whole, serve as a model. He is no drunkard, nor is he fond of intoxicating other people; yet when the horrors are upon him he has no objection to go to a public-house and call for a pint of ale, nor does he shrink from recommending ale to others when they are faint and downcast. In one instance, it is true, he does what cannot be exactly justified; he encourages the priest in the dingle, in more instances than one, in drinking more hollands and water than is consistent with decorum. He has a motive indeed in doing so; a desire to learn from the knave in his cups the plans and hopes of the Propaganda of Rome. Such conduct, however, was inconsistent with strict fair dealing and openness; and the author advises all those whose consciences never reproach them for a single unfair or covert act committed by them, to abuse him heartily for administering hollands and water to the Priest of Rome. In that instance the hero is certainly wrong; yet in all other cases with regard to drink, he is manifestly right. To tell people that they are never to drink a glass of ale or wine themselves, or to give one to others, is cant; and the writer has no toleration for cant of any description. Some cants are not dangerous; but the writer believes that a more dangerous cant than the temperance cant, or as it is generally called, teetotalism, is scarcely to be found. The writer is willing to believe that it originated with well meaning, though weak people; but there can be no doubt that it was quickly turned to account by people who were neither well meaning nor weak. Let the reader note particularly the purpose to which this cry has been turned in America⁠—the land, indeed, par excellence, of humbug and humbug cries. It is there continually in the mouth of the most violent political party, and is made an instrument of almost unexampled persecution. The writer would say more on the temperance cant, both in England and America, but want of space prevents him. There is one point on which he cannot avoid making a few brief remarks⁠—that is, the inconsistent conduct of its apostles in general. The teetotal apostle says, it is a dreadful thing to be drunk. So it is, teetotaller; but if so, why do you get drunk? I get drunk? Yes, unhappy