This true honesty, too, has some little difference in it, according to the soil or climate in which it grows, and your simplers have had some disputes about the sorts of it; nay, there have been great heats about the several kinds of this plant, which grows in different countries, and some call that honesty which others say is not; as, particularly, they say, there is a sort of honesty in my country, Yorkshire honesty, which differs very much from that which is found in these southern parts about London; then there is a sort of Scots honesty, which they say is a meaner sort than that of Yorkshire; and in New England I have heard they have a kind of honesty which is worse than the Scottish, and little better than the wild honesty called cunning, which I mentioned before. On the other hand, they tell us that in some parts of Asia, at Smyrna, and at Constantinople, the Turks have a better sort of honesty than any of us. I am sorry our Turkey Company have not imported some of it, that we might try whether it would thrive here or no. Tis a little odd to me it should grow to such a perfection in Turkey, because it has always been observed to thrive best where it is sowed with a sort of grain called religion; indeed, they never thrive in these parts of the world so well apart as they do together. And for this reason, I must own, I have found that Scots honesty, as above, to be of a very good kind.
How it is in Turkey I know not, for, in all my travels, I never set my foot in the Grand Seigniors dominions.
But to waive allegories; disputes about what is or is not honesty are dangerous to honesty itself, for no case can be doubtful which does not border upon the frontiers of dishonesty; and he that resolves not to be drowned had best never come near the brink of the water.
That man who will do nothing but what is barely honest, is in great danger. It is certainly just for me to do everything the law justifies, but if I should only square my actions by what is literally lawful, I must throw every debtor, though he be poor, in prison, and never release him till he has paid the uttermost farthing; I must hang every malefactor without mercy; I must exact the penalty of every bond, and the forfeiture of every indenture. In short, I must be uneasy to all mankind, and make them so to me; and in a word, be a very knave too, as well as a tyrant, for cruelty is not honesty.
Therefore, the Sovereign Judge of every mans honesty has laid us down a general rule, to which all the particulars are resolved, Quod tibi fieri, non vis alteri ne feceris. This is a part of that honesty I am treating of, and which indeed is the more essential of the two; this is the test of behaviour, and the grand article to have recourse to when laws are silent.
I have heard some men argue, that they are not bound to any such considerations of the indigence of persons as lead to concessions of time, or compositions with them for debts; that tis all ex gratia, or the effects of policy, because circumstances lead them to judge it better to take what they can get than lose the whole.
Speaking of the letter of the law, I allow that they may be in the right.
On the other hand, a man who gives a bond for a debt, pleads he is answerable for no more than the law will force him to; that is, he may defend a suit, stand out to the last extremity, and at last keep out of the way, so as not to have judgment or execution served on him; he may secure his estate from the execution, as well as his person, and so never pay the debt at all, and yet in the eye of the law be an honest man; and this part of legal literal honesty is supported only by the other, namely, the cruel part; for really such a man, speaking in the sense of common justice, is a knave; he ought to act according to the true intent and meaning of his obligation, and in the right of a debtor to a creditor, which is to pay him his money when it became due, not stand out to the last, because he cannot be forced to it sooner.
The laws of the country indeed allow such actions as the laws of conscience can by no means allow, as in this case of the creditor suing for his debt, and the debtor not paying it till he is forced by law. The argument made use of to vindicate the morality of such a practice, stands thus:
If a man trusts me with his money or goods upon my common credit, or upon my word, he then takes me for his money, and depends both upon my ability and my honesty; but if he comes and demands my bond, he quits his dependence upon my honesty, and takes the law for his security; so that the language of such an action is, he will have a bond, that it may be in his power to make me pay him whether I will or no; and as for my honesty, he 11 have nothing to do with it; what relief, then, I can have against this bond by the same law to which the person refers himself, is as legal an action on my side as the other mans suing for his own is on his.
And thus the letter of the law will ruin the honesty of both debtor and creditor, and yet both shall be justified too.
But if I may give my opinion in this case, neither of these are the honest man I am speaking of; for honesty does not consist of negatives, and tis not sufficient to do my neighbour no personal injury in the strict sense and letter of the law; but I am bound, where cases and circumstances make other measures reasonable, to have such regard to these cases and circumstances as reason requires. Thus, to begin with the creditor to the debtor, reason requires that where a man is reduced to extremities, he should not be destroyed for debt; and what is unreasonable cannot be honest.
Debt is no capital crime, nor ever was; and starving men in prison, a punishment worse than the gallows, seems to be a thing so severe as it ought not to be in the power of a creditor to inflict it. The laws of God never tolerated such a method of treating debtors as we have since thought proper, I wont say honest, to put in practice; but since the politics of the nation have left the debtor so much at mercy by the letter of the law, tis honest, with respect to the law, to proceed so; yet compassion is in this case thought reasonable why shouldst thou take his bed from under him? says the text; which implies, tis unnatural and unreasonable.
I have heard some men insist upon it, that if a man be sued wrongfully at law, he ought rather to submit to the injury than oppose the wrong by the same law; and yet I never found those gentlemen so passive in matters of law, but they would sue a debtor at law if they could not otherwise obtain their right.
I confess I cannot blame them for the last, but I blame them for pretending to the first. I am not arguing against recovering a just debt by a just law, where the person is able but unwilling to be honest; but I think pursuing the debtor to all extremities, to the turning his wife and children into the street, expressed in the Scripture by taking his bed from under him, and by keeping the debtor in prison when really he is not able to pay it there is something of cruelty in it, and the honest man I am speaking of can never do it.
But some may object, if I must serve all mankind as I would be served in like case, then I must relieve every beggar and release every poor debtor; for if I was a beggar I would be relieved, and if I was in prison I would be released; and so I must give away all I have. This is inverting the argument; for the meaning is in the negative still, do not to another anything, or put no hardship upon another, which you would not allow to be just if you were in their case.
Honesty is equity, every man is lord-chancellor to himself; and if he would consult that principle within him would find reason as fair an advocate for his neighbour as for himself. But I proceed.
Of the Trial of HonestyNecessity makes an honest man a knave; and if the world was to be the judge according to the common received notion, there would not be an honest poor man left alive.