 the justice of your country.
    No, rejoined Mr. Falkland, to that I can never consent. I have put a
restraint upon myself thus far, because it was right that evidence and enquiry
should take their course. I have suppressed all my habits and sentiments,
because it seemed due to the public that hypocrisy should be unmasked. But I can
suffer this violence no longer. I have through my whole life interfered to
protect, not overbear the sufferer; and I must do so now. I feel not the
smallest resentment of his impotent attacks upon my character; I smile at their
malice; and they make no diminution in my benevolence to their author. Let him
say what he pleases; he cannot hurt me. It was proper that he should be brought
to public shame, that other people might not be deceived by him as we have been.
But there is no necessity for proceeding farther; and I must insist upon it that
he be permitted to depart wherever he pleases. I am sorry that public interest
affords so gloomy a prospect for his future happiness.
    Mr. Falkland, answered Mr. Forester, these sentiments do honour to your
humanity; but I must not give way to them. They only serve to set in a stronger
light the venom of this serpent, this monster of ingratitude, who first robs his
benefactor, and then reviles him. Wretch that you are, will nothing move you?
Are you inaccessible to remorse? Are you not struck to the heart with the
unmerited goodness of your master? Vile calumniator! you are the abhorrence of
nature, the opprobrium of the human species, and the earth can only be freed
from an insupportable burthen by your being exterminated! Recollect, sir, that
this monster, at the very moment that you are exercising such unexampled
forbearance in his behalf, has the presumption to charge you with prosecuting a
crime of which you know him to be innocent, nay, with having conveyed the
pretended stolen goods among his property for the express purpose of ruining
him. By this unexampled villainy he makes it your duty to free the world from
such a pest, and your interest to admit no relaxing in your pursuit of him, lest
the world should be persuaded by your clemency to credit his vile insinuations.
    I care not for consequences, replied Mr. Falkland, I will obey the dictates
of my own mind. I will never lend my assistance to the reforming mankind by axes
and gibbets; I am sure things will never be as they ought, till honour and not
law be the dictator of mankind, till vice is taught to shrink
