The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-06-06 00:00:00

MY UNCLE, ROLA.ND'S DISCOURSE UPON

HONOUR.

(From " The Caxton," in Blackwood's Magazine.)
" Gentlemen," began the Captain, at this distinct ap-
peal thus made to him—" Gentlemen, God made the
earth, but man made the garden. God made man, but
man recreates himself."

" True, by knowledge," said my father.
" By industry," said Uncle Jack.
" By the physical condition of his body," said Mr.
Squills. " He could not have made himself other than he
was at first in the woods and wilds if he had had fins like
a fish, or could only chatter gibberish like a monkey.
Hands and a tongue, sir ; these are the instruments of
progress."
" Mr. Squills," said my father, nodding, " Anaxagoras
said very much the same thing before you, touching the
hands." _ _ _

" I can't help that," answered Mr. Squills ; " one
could not open one's lips if one were bound to say what
nobody else had said.. But, after all, our superiority is
less in our hands than in the greatness of our thumbs."
" Albinus, De Sceleto, and our own learned William
Lawrence, have made a similar remark," again put in my
father. _ _

" Haw. it, sir !" exclaimed Squills,
have you to know everything ?"
" Everything ! No; but thumbs furnish subjects for in-
vestigation to the simplest understanding." said my fa-
ther, modestly.
" Gentlemen," recommended my Uncle Roland,
" thumbs and hands are given to the Esquimaux, as well
as to scholars and surgeons—and what the deuce are they
the wiser for them ? Sirs, you cannot reduce us thus
into mechanism. Look within. Man, I say, recreates
himself. How ? BY THE PRINCIPLE OF HONOUR. His
first desire is to excel some one else—his first impulse is
distinction above his fellows. Heaven places in his soul,
as if it were a compass, a needle that always points to one
end,—viz., to honour in that which those around him
consider honourable. Therefore, as man at first is ex-
posed to all dangers from wild beasts, and from men as
savage as himself, COURAGE becomes the first quality
mankind must honour ; therefore the savage is coura-
geous; therefore he covets-praise for courage ; therefore
he decorates himself with the skins of the beasts he has
subdued, or the scalps of the foes he has slain. Sirs,
don't tell me that the skins and the scalps are only hide
and leather : they are trophies of honour. Don't tell me
they are ridiculous and disgusting ; they become glorious
as proofs that the savage has emerged out of the first
brute-like egotism, and attached price to the praise which
men never give except for works that secure or advance
their welfare. By-and-by, sirs, our savages discover that
they cannot live in safety among themselves unless they
agree to speak the truth to each other ; therefore TRUTH
becomes valued, and grows into a principle of honour; so
brother Augustine will tell us that, in the primitive times,
truth was always the attribute of a hero."
" flight," said my father : " Homer emphatically gives
it to Achilles."

" what business

" Out of truth comes the necessity for some kind of
rude justice and law. Therefore men, after courage in
the warrior, and truth in all, begin to attach honour to
the elder, whom they intrust with preserving justice
amongst them. So, sirs, LAW is born—"
" But the first lawgivers were priests," quoth my
father. _ _ _

" Sirs, lam coming to that. Whence arises the desire
of honour, but from man's necessity of excelling—in
other words, of improving his faculties for the benefit of
others,—though, unconscious of that consequence, man
only strives for their praise? But that desire for honour
is unextinguishable, and man is naturally anxious to
carry its rewards beyond the grave. Therefore, he who
has slain most lions or enemies, is naturally prone to
believe that he shall have the best hunting fields in. the
country beyond, and take the best place at the banquet.
Nature, in all its operations, impresses him with the idea
of an invisible Power; and the principle of honour,—
that is, the desire of praise and reward,—makes him
anxious for the approval which that Power can bestow.
Thence comes the first rude idea of RELIGION ; and in
the death-hymn at the stake, the savage chants songs
prophetic of the distinctions he is about to receive.
Society goes on ' • hamlets are built; property is estab-
lished. He who has more than another has more power
than another. Power is honoured. Man covets the
honour attached to the power which is attached to pos-
session. Thus the soil is cultivated ; thus the rafts are
constructed ; thus tribe trades with tribe ; thus COM-
MERCE is founded and CIVILIZATION commenced. Sirs,
all that seems least connected with honour, as we ap-
proach the vulgar days of the present, has its origin in
honour, and is but an abuse of its principles. If men
now-a-days are hucksters and traders—if even military
honours are purchased. and a rogue buys his way to a
peerage—still all arise from the desire for honour, which
society, as it grows old, gives to the outward signs of
titles and gold, instead of as once, to its inward essentials,
—courage, truth, justice, enterprise. Therefore, I say,
sirs, that honour is the foundation of all improvement in
mankind."

" You have argued like a schoolman, brother," said
Mr. Caxton admiringly ; " but still, as to this round
piece of silvei,—don't we go back to the most barbarous
ages in estimating so highly such things as have no real
value in themselves—as could not give us one opportunity
for instructing our minds."
" Could not pay for a pair of boots," added Uncle
Jack.

" Or," said Mr. Squills, " save you one twinge of the
cursed rheumatism you have got for life from that night's
bivouac in the Portuguese marshes—to say nothing of
the bullet in your cranium, and that cork leg, which must
mush diminish the salutary effects of your constitutional
walk."

" Gentlemen," resumed the Captain, nothing abashed,
"in going back to these barbarous ages, I go back to the
true principles of honour. It is precisely because this
round piece of silver has no value in the market that it is
priceless, for thus it is only a proof of desert. Where
would he the sense of service if it could buy back my leg,
or if I could bargain it away for forty thousand a-year ?
No, sirs, its value is this—that when I wear it on my
breast men shall say, ` that formal old fellow is not so
useless as he seems. He was one of those who saved
England and freed Europe.' And even wh"n I conceal
it here," (and devoutly kissing the medal, Uncle Roland
restored it to its ribbon and its resting-place,) " and no
eye sees it, its value is yet greater in the thought that my
country has not degraded the old and true principles of
honour by paying the soldier who fought for her in the
same coin as that in which you Mr. Jack, sir, pay your
bootmaker's bill. No, no, gentlemen. As courage was
the first virtue that honour called forth—the first virtue
from which all safety and civilization proceed, so we do
right to keep that one virtue at least clear and unsullied
from all the money-making, mercenary, pay-me-in-cash
abominations which are the vices, not the virtues, of the
civilisation it has produced."
My Uncle Roland here came to a full stop ; and, filling
his glass, rose and said solemnly—" A last bumper,
gentlemen.—' To the dead who died for England ! ' "