Night and Morning | Page 2

I have contributed, though humbly and
indirectly, to the benefits which Public Opinion has extorted from
Governments and Laws. While (to content myself with a single
example) the ignorant or malicious were decrying the moral of Paul
Clifford, I consoled myself with perceiving that its truths had stricken
deep--that many, whom formal essays might not reach, were enlisted
by the picture and the popular force of Fiction into the service of that
large and Catholic Humanity which frankly examines into the causes of
crime, which ameliorates the ills of society by seeking to amend the
circumstances by which they are occasioned; and commences the great
work of justice to mankind by proportioning the punishment to the

offence. That work, I know, had its share in the wise and great
relaxation of our Criminal Code--it has had its share in results yet more
valuable, because leading to more comprehensive reforms-viz., in the
courageous facing of the ills which the mock decorum of timidity
would shun to contemplate, but which, till fairly fronted, in the spirit of
practical Christianity, sap daily, more and more, the walls in which
blind Indolence would protect itself from restless Misery and rampant
Hunger. For it is not till Art has told the unthinking that nothing
(rightly treated) is too low for its breath to vivify and its wings to raise,
that the Herd awaken from their chronic lethargy of contempt, and the
Lawgiver is compelled to redress what the Poet has lifted into esteem.
In thus enlarging the boundaries of the Novelist, from trite and
conventional to untrodden ends, I have seen, not with the jealousy of an
author, but with the pride of an Originator, that I have served as a guide
to later and abler writers, both in England and abroad. If at times, while
imitating, they have mistaken me, I am not. answerable for their errors;
or if, more often, they have improved where they borrowed, I am not
envious of their laurels. They owe me at least this, that I prepared the
way for their reception, and that they would have been less popular and
more misrepresented, if the outcry which bursts upon the first
researches into new directions had not exhausted its noisy vehemence
upon me.
In this Novel of Night and Morning I have had various ends in view--
subordinate, I grant, to the higher and more durable morality which
belongs to the Ideal, and instructs us playfully while it interests, in the
passions, and through the heart. First--to deal fearlessly with that
universal unsoundness in social justice which makes distinctions so
marked and iniquitous between Vice and Crime--viz., between the
corrupting habits and the violent act--which scarce touches the former
with the lightest twig in the fasces--which lifts against the latter the
edge of the Lictor's axe. Let a child steal an apple in sport, let a
starveling steal a roll in despair, and Law conducts them to the Prison,
for evil commune to mellow them for the gibbet. But let a man spend
one apprenticeship from youth to old age in vice--let him devote a
fortune, perhaps colossal, to the wholesale demoralisation of his
kind--and he may be surrounded with the adulation of the so-called
virtuous, and be served upon its knee, by that Lackey--the Modern

World! I say not that Law can, or that Law should, reach the Vice as it
does the Crime; but I say, that Opinion may be more than the servile
shadow of Law. I impress not here, as in Paul Clifford, a material
moral to work its effect on the Journals, at the Hastings, through
Constituents, and on Legislation;--I direct myself to a channel less
active, more tardy, but as sure--to the Conscience--that reigns elder and
superior to all Law, in men's hearts and souls;--I utter boldly and loudly
a truth, if not all untold, murmured feebly and falteringly before, sooner
or later it will find its way into the judgment and the conduct, and
shape out a tribunal which requires not robe or ermine.
Secondly--In this work I have sought to lift the mask from the timid
selfishness which too often with us bears the name of Respectability.
Purposely avoiding all attraction that may savour of extravagance,
patiently subduing every tone and every hue to the aspect of those
whom we meet daily in our thoroughfares, I have shown in Robert
Beaufort the man of decorous phrase and bloodless action--the
systematic self-server-- in whom the world forgive the lack of all that is
generous, warm, and noble, in order to respect the passive acquiescence
in methodical conventions and hollow forms. And how common such
men are with us in this century, and how inviting and how necessary
their delineation, may be seen in this,--that the popular and pre-eminent
Observer of the age in