Sir Walter Scott has often been severely blamed for defending the anonymous character of the Waverley novels by falsehoods, but he would not have been blamed for defending it by silence, even when silence was fully equivalent to a falsehood. This opens an important question in casuistry. It is likely that almost all French people would say that Sir Walter had a right to defend himself in that way, as the falsehood in self-defence against curiosity is usually considered legitimate in France. Many English people do not think that kind of falsehood legitimate, yet would practise the silence that deceives, or utter a sentence carefully worded so as to be literally true whilst it conveyed an erroneous idea. Everybody defends himself against impertinent curiosity in his own way, and it can seldom be done without some sacrifice of veracity. When Robert Chambers said he wondered how the author of _Vestiges of Creation_ would have felt under Herschell’s attack, it was not true, he did not wonder, he knew accurately, being himself the author. [Sidenote: French Opinion about English Truth.] [Sidenote: English Opinion about French Truth.] [Sidenote: The Author’s Experience.] The French believe the English to be usually truthful in private transactions, but slippery and deceitful in great international affairs; the English have very little confidence in French truth, either in private or public matters. For my part, I have met with extremely deceitful and extremely honourable men in both countries. I have been cheated in both, and treated fairly and justly in both. If, however, I were asked to say which of the two nations is according to my own intimate convictions the more truthful, I should say decidedly the English, except on religious topics, and there the French are more truthful, or, if you will, more unreserved. CHAPTER II JUSTICE [Sidenote: Intellectual Justice.] What is meant by “justice” in this chapter is the power of suspending judgment until evidence is forthcoming, and then the disposition to decide on the merits of the case unbiassed by prepossessions of any kind. It is one of the rarest, perhaps the very rarest, of intellectual virtues, and hardly ever to be found in times of strife, either between nations or between parties in the same nation. [Sidenote: Little of it in France.] [Sidenote: Guyau.]