elf! Not for the world. I only kissed my thumb;
I did not put my lips to the calf-skin." I remember something very like
the right honourable Baronet's morality in a Spanish novel which I
read long ago. I beg pardon of the House for detaining them with such a
trifle; but the story is much to the purpose. A wandering lad, a sort
of Gil Blas, is taken into the service of a rich old silversmith, a most
pious man, who is always telling his beads, who hears mass daily,
and observes the feasts and fasts of the church with the utmost
scrupulosity. The silversmith is always preaching honesty and piety.
"Never," he constantly repeats to his young assistant, "never touch what
is not your own; never take liberties with sacred things." Sacrilege, as
uniting theft with profaneness, is the sin of which he has the deepest
horror. One day, while he is lecturing after his usual fashion, an
ill-looking fellow comes into the shop with a sack under his arm. "Will
you buy these?" says the visitor, and produces from the sack some church
plate and a rich silver crucifix. "Buy them!" cries the pious man. "No,
nor touch them; not for the world. I know where you got them. Wretch
that you are, have you no care for your soul?" "Well then," says the
thief, "if you will not buy them, will you melt them down for me?" "Melt
them down!" answers the silver smith, "that is quite another matter."
He takes the chalices and the crucifix with a pair of tongs; the silver,
thus in bond, is dropped into the crucible, melted, and delivered to the
thief, who lays down five pistoles and decamps with his booty. The
young servant stares at this strange scene. But the master very
gravely resumes his lecture. "My son," he says, "take warning by that
sacrilegious knave, and take example by me. Think what a load of guilt
lies on his conscience. You will see him hanged before long. But as to
me, you saw that I would not touch the stolen property. I keep these
tongs for such occasions. And thus I thrive in the fear of God, and
manage to turn an honest penny." You talk of morality. What can be more
immoral than to bring ridicule on the very name of morality, by drawing
distinctions where there are no differences? Is it not enough that this
dishonest casuistry has already poisoned our theology? Is it not enough
that a set of quibbles has been devised, under cover of which a divine
may hold the worst doctrines of the Church of Rome, and may hold with
them the best benefice of t