Даниэль Дефо - Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe - With His Vision of the Angelick World

Therefore, the Sovereign Judge of every man’s honesty has laid us down a general rule, to which all the particulars are resolved, Quod tibi fieri, non vis alteri ne feceris. This is a part of that honesty I am treating of, and which indeed is the more essential of the two; this is the test of behaviour, and the grand article to have recourse to when laws are silent.

I have heard some men argue, that they are not bound to any such considerations of the indigence of persons as lead to concessions of time, or compositions with them for debts; that ‘tis all ex gratia, or the effects of policy, because circumstances lead them to judge it better to take what they can get than lose the whole.

Speaking of the letter of the law, I allow that they may be in the right.

On the other hand, a man who gives a bond for a debt, pleads he is answerable for no more than the law will force him to; that is, he may defend a suit, stand out to the last extremity, and at last keep out of the way, so as not to have judgment or execution served on him; he may secure his estate from the execution, as well as his person, and so never pay the debt at all, and yet in the eye of the law be an honest man; and this part of legal literal honesty is supported only by the other, namely, the cruel part; for really such a man, speaking in the sense of common justice, is a knave; he ought to act according to the true intent and meaning of his obligation, and in the right of a debtor to a creditor, which is to pay him his money when it became due, not stand out to the last, because he cannot be forced to it sooner.

The laws of the country indeed allow such actions as the laws of conscience can by no means allow, as in this case of the creditor suing for his debt, and the debtor not paying it till he is forced by law. The argument made use of to vindicate the morality of such a practice, stands thus: –

If a man trusts me with his money or goods upon my common credit, or upon my word, he then takes me for his money, and depends both upon my ability and my honesty; but if he comes and demands my bond, he quits his dependence upon my honesty, and takes the law for his security; so that the language of such an action is, he will have a bond, that it may be in his power to make me pay him whether I will or no; and as for my honesty, he ‘11 have nothing to do with it; what relief, then, I can have against this bond by the same law to which the person refers himself, is as legal an action on my side as the other man’s suing for his own is on his.

And thus the letter of the law will ruin the honesty of both debtor and creditor, and yet both shall be justified too.

But if I may give my opinion in this case, neither of these are the honest man I am speaking of; for honesty does not consist of negatives, and ‘tis not sufficient to do my neighbour no personal injury in the strict sense and letter of the law; but I am bound, where cases and circumstances make other measures reasonable, to have such regard to these cases and circumstances as reason requires. Thus, to begin with the creditor to the debtor, reason requires that where a man is reduced to extremities, he should not be destroyed for debt; and what is unreasonable cannot be honest.

Debt is no capital crime, nor ever was; and starving men in prison, a punishment worse than the gallows, seems to be a thing so severe as it ought not to be in the power of a creditor to inflict it. The laws of God never tolerated such a method of treating debtors as we have since thought proper, I won’t say honest, to put in practice; but since the politics of the nation have left the debtor so much at mercy by the letter of the law, ‘tis honest, with respect to the law, to proceed so; yet compassion is in this case thought reasonable – why shouldst thou take his bed from under him? says the text; which implies, ‘tis unnatural and unreasonable.

I have heard some men insist upon it, that if a man be sued wrongfully at law, he ought rather to submit to the injury than oppose the wrong by the same law; and yet I never found those gentlemen so passive in matters of law, but they would sue a debtor at law if they could not otherwise obtain their right.

I confess I cannot blame them for the last, but I blame them for pretending to the first. I am not arguing against recovering a just debt by a just law, where the person is able but unwilling to be honest; but I think pursuing the debtor to all extremities, to the turning his wife and children into the street, expressed in the Scripture by taking his bed from under him, and by keeping the debtor in prison when really he is not able to pay it – there is something of cruelty in it, and the honest man I am speaking of can never do it.

But some may object, if I must serve all mankind as I would be served in like case, then I must relieve every beggar and release every poor debtor; for if I was a beggar I would be relieved, and if I was in prison I would be released; and so I must give away all I have. This is inverting the argument; for the meaning is in the negative still, do not to another anything, or put no hardship upon another, which you would not allow to be just if you were in their case.

Honesty is equity, every man is lord-chancellor to himself; and if he would consult that principle within him would find reason as fair an advocate for his neighbour as for himself. But I proceed.

Necessity makes an honest man a knave; and if the world was to be the judge according to the common received notion, there would not be an honest poor man left alive.

A rich man is an honest man – no thanks to him; for he would be a double knave to cheat mankind when he had no need of it: he has no occasion to press upon his integrity, nor so much as touch upon the borders of dishonesty. Tell me of a man that is a very honest man, for he pays everybody punctually, runs into nobody’s debt, does no man any wrong; very well – what circumstances is he in? Why, he has a good estate, a fine yearly income, and no business to do. The devil must have full possession of this man if he should be a knave, for no man commits evil for the sake of it; even the devil himself has some farther design in sinning than barely the wicked part of it. No man is so hardened in crimes as to commit them for the mere pleasure of the fact – there is always some vice gratified; ambition, pride, or avarice makes rich men knaves, and necessity the poor. But to go on with this rich honest man; his neighbour, a thriving merchant, and whose honesty had as untainted a character as he can pretend to, has a rich ship cast away, or a factor abroad broke in his debt, and his bills come back protested, and he fails – is fain to abscond and make a composition. Our rich honest man flies out upon him presently he is a knave, a rogue, and don’t pay people what he owes them; and we should have a law that he that runs into debt farther than he is able to pay should be hanged, and the like. If the poor man is laid hold on by some creditor, and put in prison – ay, there let him lie, he deserves it; ‘t will be an example to keep others from the like. And now, when all is done, this broken merchant may be as honest a man as the other.

You say you are an honest man: how do you know it? Did you ever want bread, and had your neighbour’s loaf in your keeping, and would starve rather than eat it? Was you ever arrested, and being not able by yourself or friends to make peace with your plaintiff, and at the same time having another man’s money in your cash chest committed to your keeping, suffered yourself to be carried to gaol rather than break bulk and break in upon your trust? God Himself has declared that the power of extremity is irresistible, and that so, as to our integrity, that He has bid us not despise the thief that steals in such a case; not that the man is less a thief, or the fact less dishonest. But the text is most remarkably worded for instruction in this point; don’t you despise the man, but remember, if you were driven to the same exigence, you would be the same man and do the same thing, though now you fancy your principle so good; therefore, whatever his crime may be as to God, don’t reproach him with it here; but you that think you stand, take heed lest you fall.