The knot that binds me by the laws of courtesy binds me more than that of civil constraint; I am much more at ease when bound by a scrivener, than by myself. Is it not reason that my conscience should be much more engaged when men 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 the external offices of public reason, I, notwithstanding, find a great saving in doing that upon the account of justice which I did upon the score of affection, and am a little eased of the attention and solicitude of my inward will: "Est prudentis sustinere, ut currum, sic impetum benevolentia;"