The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant by John Hamilton Moore
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page 65 of 536 (12%)
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and at least not detested by the women: the drunkard may easily unite
with beings, devoted like himself to noisy merriment or silent insensibility, who will celebrate his victories over the novices of intemperance, boast themselves the companions of his prowess, and tell with rapture of the multitudes whom unsuccessful emulation has hurried to the grave: even the robber and the cut-throat have their followers, who admire their address and intrepidity, their stratagems of rapine, and their fidelity to the gang. 33. The lyar, and only the lyar, is invariably and universally despised, abandoned and disowned: he has no domestic consolations, which he can oppose to the censure of mankind; he can retire to no fraternity where his crimes may stand in the place of virtues, but is given up to the hisses of the multitude, without friend and without apologist. It is the peculiar condition of falsehood, to be equally detested by the good and bad: "The devils," says Sir _Thomas Brown_, "do not tell lies to one another; for truth is necessary to all societies; nor can the society of hell subsist without it." 34. It is natural to expect, that a crime thus generally detested, should be generally avoided; at least that none should expose himself to unabated and unpitied infamy, without an adequate temptation; and that to guilt so easily detected, and so severely punished, an adequate temptation would not readily be found. 35. Yet so it is, that in defiance of censure and contempt, truth is frequently violated; and scarcely the most vigilant unremitted circumspection will secure him that mixes with mankind, from being hourly deceived by men of whom it can scarcely be imagined, that they mean an injury to him or profit to themselves; even where the subject of |
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