DEAR M. many
thanks for the Books; the Faust I will acknowledge to the Author. But most thanks for one immortal sentence, “If
I do not cheat him, never trust me again.” I do not know whether
to admire most, the wit or justness of the sentiment. It has my cordial
approbation. My sense of meum and tuum applauds it. I maintain it, the eighth
commandment hath a secret special reservation, by which the reptile is exempt
from any protection from it; as a dog, or a nigger, he is not a holder of
property. Not a ninth of what he detains from the world is his own. Keep your
hands from picking and stealing is no ways referable to his acquists. I doubt
whether bearing false witness against thy neighbor at all contemplated this
possible scrub. Could Moses have seen the speck in vision?
An ex post facto law alone could relieve him, and we are
taught to expect no eleventh commandment. The out-law to the Mosaic
dispensation!—unworthy to have seen Moses’ behind—to
lay his desecrating
| 1833 | TAYLOR SUMMARISED | 905 |
Mind, you’ll come, two of you—and couldn’t you go off in the morning, that we may have a daylong curse at him, if curses are not dis-hallowed by descending so low? Amen. Maledicatur in extremis.
