[23]
In despotic governments, where lives, characters, and liberties are
every moment at the mercy, not only of the prince but of all his
public officers from the highest to the lowest, the occasions in
which men feel authorized and actually called upon by the common
feelings of humanity to tell 'peacemaking lies' occur every day--nay,
every hour, every petty officer of government, 'armed with his little
brief authority', is a little tyrant surrounded by men whose all
depends upon his will, and who dare not tell him the truth--the
'point of honour' in this little circle demands that every one should
be prepared to tell him 'peace-making lies'; and the man who does not
do so when the occasion seems to call for it, incurs the odium of the
whole circle, as one maliciously disposed to speak 'anger-exciting or
factions truths'. Poor Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were obliged to talk
of _love_ and _duty_ toward their brutal murderer, Henry VIII, and
tell 'peace-making lies' on the scaffold to save their poor children
from his resentment. European gentlemen in India often, by their
violence surround themselves with circles of the same kind, in which
the 'point of honour' demands that every member shall be prepared to
tell 'peace-making lies', to save the others from the effects of
their master's ungovernable passions--falsehood is their only
safeguard; and, consequently, falsehood ceases to be odious.
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