n simply rely upon it? In a bond, my faith owes nothing,
because it has nothing lent it; let them trust to the security they have
taken without me. I had much rather break the wall of a prison and the
laws themselves than my own word. I am nice, even to superstition, in
keeping my promises, and, therefore, upon all occasions have a care to
make them uncertain and conditional. To those of no great moment, I add
the jealousy of my own rule, to make them weight; it wracks and oppresses
me with its own interest. Even in actions wholly my own and free, if I
once say a thing, I conceive that I have bound myself, and that
delivering it to the knowledge of another, I have positively enjoined it
my own performance. Methinks I promise it, if I but say it: and
therefore am not apt to say much of that kind. The sentence that I pass
upon myself is more severe than that of a judge, who only considers the
common obligation; but my conscience looks upon it with a more severe and
penetrating eye. I lag in those duties to which I should be compelled if
I did not go:

"Hoc ipsum ita justum est, quod recte fit, si est voluntarium."

["This itself is so far just, that it is rightly done, if it is
voluntary."--Cicero, De Offic., i. 9.]

If the action has not some splendour of liberty, it has neither grace nor
honour:

"Quod vos jus cogit, vix voluntate impetrent:"

["That which the laws compel us to do, we scarcely do with a will."
--Terence, Adelph., iii. 3, 44.]

where necessity draws me, I love to let my will take its own course:

"Quia quicquid imperio cogitur, exigenti magis,
quam praestanti, acceptum refertur."

["For whatever is compelled by power, is more imputed to him that
exacts than to him that performs."--Valerius Maximus, ii. 2, 6.]

I know some who follow this rule, even to injustice; who will sooner give
than restore, sooner lend than pay, and will do them the least good to
whom they are most obliged. I don't go so far as that, but I'm not far
off.

I so much love to disengage and disobligate myself, that I have sometimes
looked upon ingratitudes, affronts, and indignities which I have received
from those to whom either by nature or accident I was bound in some way
of friendship, as an advantage to me; taking this occasion of their
ill-usage, for an acquaintance and discharge of so much of my debt. And
though I still continue to pay them all