“Dishonoured!  Certainly not; even his brother was not dishonoured.  He broke the law, but he paid for it with his life, and owed society nothing more.  He’s a man of honour, who played high and lost; that’s all.  I don’t know that there is any penalty in the statute book which dishonours the culprit; that would be tyrannical, and we would not bear it.  I may break any law I like, so long as I am willing to pay the penalty.  It is only a dishonour when the criminal tries to escape punishment by base or cowardly actions.”

“How do you mean?”

“To ask for the royal mercy, to beg forgiveness of the people, and the like.”

“How about escaping from justice?”

“That is no dishonour, for to fly is an act of courage; it continues the defiance of the law, and if the law cannot exact obedience, so much the worse for it.  It is an honour for you to have escaped from the tyranny of your magistrates; your flight from The Leads was a virtuous action.  In such cases man fights with death and flees from it.  ’Vir fugiens denuo pugnabit’.”

“What do you think of highway robbers, then?”

“I detest them as wretches dangerous to society, but I pity them when I reflect that they are always riding towards the gallows.  You go out in a coach to pay a visit to a friend three or four miles out of London.  A determined and agile-looking fellow springs upon you with his pistol in his hand, and says, ‘Your money or your life.’  What would you do in such a case?”

“If I had a pistol handy I would blow out his brains, and if not I would give him my purse and call him a scoundrelly assassin.”

“You would be wrong in both cases.  If you killed him, you would be hanged, for you have no right to take the law into your own hands; and if you called him an assassin, he would tell you that he was no assassin as he attacked you openly and gave you a free choice.  Nay, he is generous, for he might kill you and take your money as well.  You might, indeed, tell him he has an evil trade, and he would tell you that you were right, and that he would try to avoid the gallows as long as possible.  He would then thank you and advise you never to drive out of London without being accompanied by a mounted servant, as then no robber would dare to attack you.  We English always carry two purses on our journeys; a small one for the robbers and a large one for ourselves.”

What answer could I make to such arguments, based as they were on the national manners?  England is a rich sea, but strewn with reefs, and those who voyage there would do well to take precautions.  Sir Augustus Hervey’s discourse gave me great pleasure.

Going from one topic to another, as is always the way with a desultory conversation, Sir Augustus deplored the fate of an unhappy Englishman who had absconded to France with seventy thousand pounds, and had been brought back to London, and was to be hanged.

“How could that be?” I asked.