After several previous questions, remarks and
rejoinders, I continued:
    Well, sir, after all, I cannot help feeling very uncomfortably as to my
ideas of human nature, when I find that there is no dependence to be placed upon
its perseverance, and that, at least among the illiterate, the most promising
appearances may end in the foulest disgrace.
    You think then that literature and a cultivated mind are the only assurance
for the constancy of our principles?
    Humh! - why do you suppose, sir, that learning and ingenuity do not often
serve people rather to hide their crimes, than to restrain them from committing
them? History tells us strange things in that respect.
    Williams! said Mr. Falkland, a little disturbed, you are extremely given to
censure and severity.
    I hope not. I am sure I am most fond of looking on the other side of the
picture, and considering how many men have been aspersed, and even at some time
or other almost torn to pieces by their fellow creatures, whom, when properly
understood, we find worthy of our reverence and love.
    Indeed, replied Mr. Falkland with a sigh, when I consider these things, I do
not wonder at the dying exclamation of Brutus, O Virtue! I sought thee as a
substance, but I find thee an empty name! I am too much inclined to be of his
opinion.
    Why to be sure, sir, innocence and guilt are too much confounded in human
life. I remember an affecting story of a poor man in the reign of queen
Elizabeth, who would have infallibly been hanged for murder upon the strength of
circumstantial evidence, if the person really concerned had not been himself
upon the jury, and prevented it.
    In saying this I touched the spring that wakened madness in his mind. He
came up to me with a ferocious countenance as if determined to force me into a
confession of my thoughts. A sudden pang however seemed to change his design; he
drew back with trepidation; and exclaimed, Detested be the universe, and the
laws that govern it! Honour, justice, virtue are all the juggle of knaves! If it
were in my power, I would instantly crush the whole system into nothing!
    I replied; Oh, sir! things are not so bad as you imagine. The world was made
for men of sense to do what they will with it. Its affairs cannot be better than
in the direction of the genuine heroes; and, as in the end they will be found
the truest friends of the whole, so the multitude have nothing to do,