I question not but ‘tis the same with other people; for when malice is in the heart, reproach generally goes a mile before consideration, and where is the honesty of the man all this while? This is trampling upon my pride, sed majori fastu, but with greater pride; ‘tis exposing my dishonesty, but with the highest knavery; ‘tis a method no honest man will take, and when taken, no honest man regards; wherefore, let none of these sons of slander take satisfaction in the frequent acknowledgments I am always ready to make of my own failing, for that humility with which I always find cause to look into my own heart, where I see others worse, and more guilty of crimes than they can lay to my charge, yet makes me look back upon their weakness with the last contempt, who fix their impotent charges where there is not room to take hold, and run away with the air and shadow of crimes never committed.

I have instanced this, not at all on my own account, for ‘tis not worth while, for if I am injured, what ‘s that to troubling the world with when I am forgotten? But while I am examining the nicest article in the world, honesty, I cannot but lay down these three heads from the preceding observations: –

He who is forward to reproach the infirmities of other men’s honesty, is very near a breach of his own.

He that hastily reproaches another without sufficient ground, cannot be an honest man.

Where there may be sufficient ground of reproach, yet an honest man is always tender of his neighbour’s character from the sense of his own frailty.

But I return to honesty, as it affects a man’s pledging his word, which is the counterpart of his principle, and this because, as I said, I should chiefly regard this honesty as it concerns human affairs, conversation, and negotiation.

And here I meet with a tradesman come just in from dunning one of his neighbours. “Well, I have been at a place for money,” says he, “but I can get none. There ‘s such an one, he passes for an honest man, but I am sure he is a great rogue to me, for he has promised me my money a long time, but puts me off still from time to time; he makes no more of breaking his word, than of drinking a glass of beer. I am sure he has told me forty lies already. This is one of your honest men; if all such honest men were hanged, we should have a better trade.” And thus he runs on.

If all such honest men were hanged, they that were left might have a better trade; but how many of them would there be?

Now, though I shall in no way vindicate men’s hasty promises absolutely to perform what is doubtful in the event, yet I cannot agree that every man who, having promised a payment, does not perform it to his time, is a knave or a liar. If it were so, the Lord have mercy upon three parts of the city.

Wherefore, to state this matter clearly, it must be taken a little to pieces, and the articles spoken to apart.

First. Without question, when a man makes a promise of payment to another on a set day, knowing in his own thoughts that it is not probable he should be capable to comply with it, or really designing not to comply with it, or not endeavouring to comply with it, ‘tis a deceit put upon the party, ‘tis a premeditated formal lie, the man that made it is a stranger to honesty; he is a knave, and everything that is base and bad. But,

Secondly. Promises ought to be understood, both by the person to whom and the person by whom they are made, as liable to those contingencies that all human affairs and persons are liable to, as death, accidents, disappointments, and disorder. Thus, if a man who ought to pay me to-day tells me, “Sir, I cannot comply with you to-day; but if you call for it next week, you shall have it;” if I may put this answer into plainer English, and I suppose the man to be an honest man, I cannot understand his meaning otherwise than thus: –

“Sir, I acknowledge your money is due. I have not cash enough by me to pay you to-day, but I have several running bills, and several persons who have promised me money, which I doubt not I shall receive against such a time; and if you call then, I make no question but I shall be able to do it; and if it is possible for me to pay you, I will do it at that time without fail.”

I confess it were as well to express themselves thus at large in all the appointments people make for payment, and would the persons who make them consider it, they would do so; but custom has prevailed in our general way of speaking, whereby all things that are subject to the common known contingents of life, or visible in the circumstances of the case, are understood without being expressed. For example: –

I make an appointment of meeting a man positively at such a town, such a certain day or hour. If I were talking to a Turk or a pagan that knows nothing, or believes nothing of supreme Providence, I would say – If the Lord of heaven and earth, that governs all my actions, please to preserve and permit me. But when I am talking to a Christian, it should seem to be so universally supposed that every appointment is subjected and submits to the government of Providence, that the repetition would be needless; and that when a man promises positively to meet, ‘tis with a general sub-intellig-itur, a reserve as natural as Nature itself, to the Divine permission. All men know, that unless I am alive I cannot come there, or if I am taken sick, both which may easily happen, I shall disappoint him. And, therefore, if he should urge me again to come without fail, and I should reply, “I won’t fail if I am alive and well,” the man ought to take it for an affront, and ask me if I take him for a fool, to think if I am taken sick, I should come with my bed at my back, or if death should intervene, he had occasion to speak with my ghost.

In this sense, a tradesman who promises payment of money at a set time; first, ‘tis supposed he has it not now in his hands, because he puts off the person demanding to a further day, and promises to comply with it then. This promise, therefore, can be understood no otherwise than that he expects to receive money by that time. Now, if this man, by the like disappointments from other men, or any other involuntary casualty, is really and bonâ fide unable to comply with the time of promised payment, I can not see but this may befall an honest man, and he neither designing to fail when he promised, not being able to prevent the accident that obliged him to do it, nor in any way voluntary in the breach, is not, in my opinion, guilty of a lie, or breach of his honour, though he did not make those verbal reserves in the promises he had given.

If every man who cannot comply with promised payments should be thus branded with lying and dishonesty, then let him who is without the sin cast the stone, for nobody else ought to do it.

‘Tis true, there is a difference between an accident and a practice; that is, in short, there is a difference between him who meets with a great many occasions thus to break his word, and he that meets with but few; but if it be a crime, he that commits it once is no more an honest man than he that commits it forty times; and if it be not a crime, he that does it forty times is as honest as he that has occasion to do it but once.

But let no man take encouragement from hence to be prodigal of his word, and slack in his performance; for this nice path is so near the edge of the pit of knavery, that the least slip lets you fall in.

These promises must have abundance of circumstances to bring the honest man out of the scandal.

As, first. The disappointments which occasioned this breach of his word must have been unforeseen and unexpected, otherwise the expectation of performing his promise was ill grounded, and then his honesty is answerable for the very making the promise, as well as the breaking it.

Second. No endeavours must be wanting to comply with the promise, otherwise ‘tis wrong to say, “I am disappointed, and can’t make good my word.” The man ought to say, “Sir, I have disappointed myself by my negligence or wilfulness, and have obliged myself to break my word;” or, in English, “Sir, I am a knave; for though I made you a promise which I might have performed, I took no care about it, not valuing the forfeiture of my word.”

If, then, the case is so nice, though, in the strictness of speaking, such a disappointment may oblige an honest man to break his word, yet every honest man, who would preserve that character to himself, ought to be the more wary, and industriously avoid making such absolute unconditional promises, because we are to avoid the circumstances of offence.

But as to the nature of the thing, ‘tis plain to me that a man may in such cases be obliged to break his word unwillingly; and nothing can be a fraud or dishonest action in that case, which is not either voluntary in itself, or the occasion voluntarily procured.

Of Relative Honesty

As honesty is simple and plain, without gloss and pretence, so it is universal. He that may uphold an untainted reputation in one particular, may be justly branded with infamy in another. A man may be punctual in his dealings, and a knave in his relations; honest in his warehouse, and a knave at his fireside; he may be a saint in his company, a devil in his family; true to his word, and false to his friendship; but whosoever he be, he is no honest man. An honest man is all of a piece the whole contexture of his life; his general conduct is genuine, and squared according to the rules of honesty; he never runs into extremes and excesses on one hand or other.

I confess I find this thing which they call relative honesty very little thought of in the world, and that which is still worse, ‘tis very little understood. I ‘11 bring it down to but a few examples, some of which frequently happen among us, and will therefore be the more familiarly received.

There are relative obligations entailed on us in our family circumstances, which are just debts, and must be paid, and which, in a word, a man can no more be honest if he does not make conscience of discharging, than he can in the case of the most unquestionable debts between man and man.

The debts from children to parents, and from wives to their husbands, are in a manner relatively changed, and the obligation transferred into the order of religious duties. God, the guide and commander of all subordination, has, as it were, taken that part into His own hand. ‘Tis rather called a duty to Him than a relative duty only. But if men take this for a discharge to them of all relative obligations to wives and to children, or that God had less required one than the other, they must act upon very wrong principles.

Nature, indeed, dictates in general a man’s providing subsistence for his family, and he is declared to be so far from a Christian that he is worse than an infidel that neglects it. But there are other parts of our obligations which honesty calls upon us to perform.

A wife and children are creditors to the father of the family, and he cannot be an honest man that does not discharge his debt to them, any more than he could if he did not repay money borrowed to a stranger; and not to lead my reader on to intricate and disputed particulars, I instance principally in those that nobody can dispute, as, first, education. By this I mean, not only putting children to school, which some parents think is all they have to do with or for their children, and indeed with some is all that they know how to do, or are fit to do; I say, I do not mean this only, but several other additional cares, as: (1.) Directing what school, what parts of learning are proper for them, what improvements they are to be taught; (2.) studying the genius and capacities of their children in what they teach them. Some children will voluntarily learn one thing, and can never be forced to learn another, and for want of which observing the genius of children we have so many learned blockheads in the world, who are mere scholars, pedants, and no more. (3.) But the main part of this debt which relative honesty calls upon us to pay to our children, is the debt of instruction, the debt of government, the debt of example. He that neglects to pay any of these to his family is a relative knave, let him value himself upon his honesty in paying his other debts as much as he will.

‘Tis a strange notion men have of honesty and of their being honest men, as if it related to nothing but tradesmen or men who borrow and lend, or that the title was obtained by an ordinary observance of right and wrong between man and man. Tis a great mistake; the name of an honest man is neither so easily gained, nor so soon lost as these men imagine. David was a very honest man, notwithstanding his passion and revenge in the case of Nabal, his murder in the case of Uriah, or his adultery in the case of Bathsheba. The intent and main design of his life was upright; and whenever he fell by the power of that temptation that overcame him, he rose again by repentance.

Let no vain men flatter themselves with the pride of their honesty in mere matters of debtor and creditor, though that is also absolutely necessary and essential to an honest man.

But trace this honest man home to his family. Is he a tyrant or a churl to his wife? Is he a stranger to the conduct and behaviour of his children? Is he an Eli to their vices? Are they uninstructed, uncorrected, unexhorted, ungoverned, or ill governed? That man is a knave, a relative knave; he neither does his duty to God, or pays the debt of a husband, or of a parent, to his wife or his family.

Secondly, after the debt of education, there is the debt of induction due from us to our children. The debt from a parent is far from ending when the children come from school, as the brutes who turn their young off from them when they are just able to pick for themselves. It is our business, doubtless, to introduce them into the world, and to do it in such a manner as suits the circumstances we are in, as to their supply, and the inclinations and capacities of our children. This is a debt the want of paying which makes many children too justly reproach their parents with neglecting them in their youth, and not giving them the necessary introduction into the world, as might have qualified them to struggle and shift for themselves.

Not to do this is to ruin our children negatively on one hand, as doing it without judgment and without regard to our family circumstances, and our children’s capacities, is a positive ruining them on the other. I could very usefully run out this part into a long discourse on the necessity there is of consulting the inclinations and capacities of our children in our placing them out in the world. How many a martial spirit do we find damned to trade, while we spoil many a good porter, and convert the able limbs and bones of a blockhead into the figure of a long robe, or a gown and cassock?

How many awkward clumsy fellows do we breed to surgery or to music, whose fingers and joints Nature originally designed, and plainly showed it us by their size, were better suited for the blacksmith’s sledge or the carpenter’s axe, the waterman’s oar or the carman’s whip?

Whence comes it to pass that we have so many young men brought to the bar and to the pulpit with stammering tongues, hesitations and impediments in their speech, unmusical voices, and no common utterance; while, on the other hand, Nature’s cripples – bow-legged, battle hammed, and half-made creatures – are bred tumblers and dancingmasters?

I name these because they occur most in our common observation, and are all miserable examples, where the children curse the knavery of their fathers in not paying the debt they owed to them as parents, in putting them to employments that had been suitable to their capacities, and suitable to what Nature had cut them out for.

I came into a public-house once in London, where there was a black mulatto-looking man sitting, talking very warmly among some gentlemen, who, I observed, were listening very attentively to what he said, and I sat myself down and did the like. ‘T was with great pleasure I heard him discourse very handsomely on several weighty subjects. I found he was a very good scholar, had been very handsomely bred, and that learning and study were his delight; and, more than that, some of the best of science was at that time his employment. At length I took the freedom to ask him if he was born in England?

He replied with a great deal of good humour in the manner, but with an excess of resentment at his father, and with tears in his eyes, “Yes, yes, sir, I am a true-born Englishman; to my father’s shame be it spoken, who, being an Englishman himself, could find it in his heart to join himself to a negro woman, though he must needs know the children he should beget would curse the memory of such an action, and abhor his very name for the sake of it. Yes, yes,” says he, repeating it again, “I am an Englishman, and born in lawful wedlock; happy had it been for me, though my father had gone to the devil for whoredom, had he lain with a cook-maid, or produced me from the meanest beggar-woman in the street. My father might do the duty of nature to his black wife; but, God knows, he did no justice to his children. If it had not been for this damned black face of mine,” says he, then smiling, “I had been bred to the law, or brought up in the study of divinity; but my father gave me learning to no manner of purpose, for he knew I should never be able to rise by it to anything but a learned valet de chambre. What he put me to school for I cannot imagine; he spoiled a good tarpauling when he strove to make me a gentleman. When he had resolved to marry a slave and lie with a slave, he should have begot slaves, and let us have been bred as we were born; but he has twice ruined me – first, with getting me a frightful face, and then going to paint a gentleman upon me.”

It was a most affecting discourse indeed, and as such I record it; and I found it ended in tears from the person, who was in himself the most deserving, modest, and judicious man that I ever met with under a negro countenance in my life.

After this story I persuaded myself I need say no more to this case; the education of our children, their instruction, and the introducing them into the world, is a part of honesty, a debt we owe to them; and he cannot be an honest man that does not, to the utmost of his ability and judgment, endeavour to pay it.

All the other relative obligations, which family circumstances call for the discharge of, allow the same method of arguing for, and are debts in their proportion, and must be paid upon the same principle of integrity. I have neither room nor is there any occasion to enlarge upon them.