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In Paris each ministry is a little town by itself, whence women are banished; but there is just as much detraction and scandal as though the feminine population were admitted there. At the end of three years, Monsieur Marneffe's position was perfectly clear and open to the day, and in every room one and another asked, "Is Marneffe to be, or not to be, Coquet's successor?"
The only instances I heard of were related to me by Swedes themselves, a large class of whom make a point of depreciating their own country and character. This habit of detraction is carried to quite as great an extreme as the vanity of the Norwegians, and is the less pardonable vice of the two.
"That I may have constant regard to honor and probity; that I may possess an innocent and good conscience, and at length become truly virtuous and magnanimous. Help me, O God! "That I may refrain from calumny and detraction; that I may abhor deceit, and avoid lying, envy and fraud, flattery, hatred, malice and ingratitude. Help me, O God!".
He had been vaguely drawn to the theme, and when it was too late to recede, he found himself baffled by the paradoxes which he encountered, and by the contradictions of a figure seen darkly through a mist of historical detraction. He met these difficulties as well as he could, and as a prudent dramatic poet should, by close and observant study of the document.
Others admitted that the plans which were popularly attributed to Montague were excellent, but denied that those plans were Montague's. The voice of detraction, however, was for a time drowned by the loud applauses of the Parliament and the City. The authority which the Chancellor of the Exchequer exercised in the House of Commons was unprecedented and unrivalled.
If any individual should speak ill of one who is absent, it is incumbent on his hearers, in a spiritual and friendly manner, to stop him, and say in effect: would this detraction serve any useful purpose? Would it please the Blessed Beauty, contribute to the lasting honour of the friends, promote the holy Faith, support the Covenant, or be of any possible benefit to any soul? No, never!
For if such detraction is passed over in silence, my own reputation, and not my work, may be attacked by an anonymous hireling in the cause of slavery. The Apology for Negroe Slavery is almost too despicable a composition to merit a reply. This writer, speaking of the slave-trade, asserts, that people are never kidnapped on the coast of Africa.
The wire-pulling and the bribing, the pitiful truckling and the grotesque compromises, the exaggeration and the detraction, the melo-dramatic issues and the sham patriotism, the party watch-words and the party nick-names, the schemes of the few paraded as the will of the many, the elevation of men whose only worth is in the votes they command vile men, whose hands you would not grasp in friendship, whose presence you would not tolerate by your fireside incompetent men, whose fitness is not in their capacity as functionaries, or legislators, but as organ pipes; the snatching at the slices and offal of office, the intemperance and the violence, the finesse and the falsehood, the gin and the glory; these are indeed but too closely identified with that political agitation which circles around the Ballot-Box.
You must not be guided by the opinions and judgments of the present generation only, but of those to come also: and yet the latter will be a more candid judgment, for it will not be influenced by detraction and malice.
His conversation was pleasant, witty, and learned, without the least tincture of affectation or pedantry; and his inimitable manner of diverting, or enlivening the company, made it impossible for any one to be out of humour when he was in it: Envy and detraction, seemed to be entirely foreign to his constitution; and whatever provocation he met with at any time, he passed them over, without the least thought of resentment or revenge.
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