Italy : 32. National Prejudices

'Another Assassination! This venerable City,' I ex-
claimed, 'what is it, but as it began, a nest of robbers
and murderers? We must away at sunrise, Luigi.' --
But before sunrise I had reflected a little, and in the
soberest prose. My indignation was gone; and when
Luigi undrew my curtain, crying, 'Up, Signor, up! The
horses are at the gate.' 'Luigi,' I replied, 'if thou
lovest me, draw the curtain.'
It would lessen very much the severity with which men
judge of each other, if they would but trace effects to
their causes, and observe the progress of things in the
moral as accurately as in the physical world. When we
condemn millions in the mass as vindictive and sanguinary,
we should remember that, wherever Justice is ill-adminis-
tered, the injured will redress themselves. Robbery
provokes to robbery; murder to assassination. Resent-
ments become hereditary; and what began in disorder,
ends as if all hell had broke loose.
Laws create a habit of self-restraint, not only by the
influence of fear, but by regulating in its exercise the
passion of revenge. If they overawe the bad by the
prospect of a punishment certain and well-defined, they
console the injured by the infliction of that punishment ;
and, as the infliction is a public act, it excites and entails
no enmity. The laws are offended ; and the community
for its own sake pursues and overtakes the offender; often
without the concurrence of the sufferer, sometimes against
his wishes.
Now those who were not born, like ourselves, to such
advantages, we should surely rather pity than hate; and,
when at length they venture to turn against their rulers,
we should lament, not wonder at their excesses; remem-
bering that nations are naturally patient and long suffer-
ing, and seldom rise in rebellion till they are so degraded
by a bad government as to be almost incapable of a good
one.
'Hate them, perhaps,' you may say, 'we should not ;
but despise them we must, if enslaved, like the people of
Rome, in mind as well as body ; if their religion be a
gross and barbarous superstition.' -- I respect knowledge ;
but I do not despise ignorance. They think only as their
fathers thought, worship as they worshipped. They do
no more ; and, if ours had not burst their bondage, brav -
ing imprisonment and death, might not we at this very
moment have been exhibiting, in our streets and our
churches, the same processions, ceremonials, and mortifi-
cations?
Nor should we require from those who are in an earlier
stage of society, what belongs to a later. They are only
where we one were; and why hold them in derision?
It is their business to cultivate the inferior arts before
they think of the more refined ; and in many of the last
what are we as a nation, when compared to others that
have passed away? Unfortunately it is too much the
practice of governments to nurse and keep alive in the
governed their national prejudices. It withdraws their
attention from what is passing at home, and makes them
better tools in the hands of Ambition. Hence next-door
neighbours are held up to us from our childhood as natural
enemies ; and we are urged on like curs to worry each other.
In like manner we should learn to be just to individuals.
Who can say, 'In such circumstances I should have
done otherwise?' Who, did he but reflect by what
slow gradations, often by how many strange concurrences,
we are led astray; with how much reluctance, how much
agony, how many efforts to escape, how many self-
accusations, how many sighs, how many tears. --- Who,
did he but reflect for a moment, would have the heart
to cast a stone? Fortunately these things are known
to Him, from whom no secrets are hidden ; and let us
rest in the assurance that His judgements are not as ours
are.