the words written were base beyond parallel, the rage, I am happy
to repeat--it is the only compliment I shall pay you--the rage was
almost virtuous. But, sir, when we have failed, and another has
succeeded; when we have stood by, and another has stepped in; when
we sit and grow bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain,
uncouth peasant steps into the battle, under the eyes of God, and
succours the afflicted, and consoles the dying, and is himself
afflicted in his turn, and dies upon the field of honour--the
battle cannot be retrieved as your unhappy irritation has
suggested. It is a lost battle, and lost for ever. One thing
remained to you in your defeat--some rags of common honour; and
these you have made haste to cast away.

Common honour; not the honour of having done anything right, but
the honour of not having done aught conspicuously foul; the honour
of the inert: that was what remained to you. We are not all
expected to be Damiens; a man may conceive his duty more narrowly,
he may love his comforts better; and none will cast a stone at him
for that. But will a gentleman of your reverend profession allow
me an example from the fields of gallantry? When two gentlemen
compete for the favour of a lady, and the one succeeds and the
other is rejected, and (as will sometimes happen) matter damaging
to the successful rival's credit reaches the ear of the defeated,
it is held by plain men of no pretensions that his mouth is, in the
circumstance, almost necessarily closed. Your Church and Damien's
were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to do well: to help, to edify, to
set divine examples. You having (in one huge instance) failed, and
Damien succeeded, I marvel it should not have occurred to you that
you were doomed to silence; that when you had been outstripped in
that high rivalry, and sat inglorious in the midst of your