Narrative and Miscellaneous PapersDe Quincey, Thomas
General
Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays; English fiction
For instance, now I have myself seen a case where a man cultivating a
flower-garden, and distressed for some deliverance from his rubbish of
dead leaves, litter, straw, stones, took the desperate resolution of
projecting the whole upon his neighbor's flower-garden. I, a chance
spectator of the outrage, knew too much of this world to lodge any
protest against it, on the principle of mere abstract justice; so it
would have passed unnoticed, but for the accident that his injured
neighbor unexpectedly raised up his head above the dividing wall, and
reproached the aggressor with his unprincipled conduct. This aggressor,
adding evil to evil, suggested as the natural remedy for his own wrong,
that the sufferer should pass the nuisance onwards to the garden next
beyond him; from which it might be posted forward on the same principle.
The aggrieved man, however, preferred passing it back, without any
discount to the original proprietor. Here now, is a ripe case, a _causa
teterrima_, for war between the parties, and for a national war had
the parties been nations. In fact, the very same injury, in a more
aggravated shape, is perpetrated from time to time by Jersey upon
ourselves, and would, upon a larger scale, right itself by war. Convicts
are costly to maintain; and Jersey, whose national revenue is limited,
being too well aware of this, does us the favor to land upon the coasts
of Hampshire, Dorset, &c., all the criminals whom she cannot summarily
send back to self-support, at each jail-delivery. 'What are we to do in
England?' is the natural question propounded by the injured scoundrels,
when taking leave of their Jersey escort. 'Anything you please,' is
the answer: 'rise if you can, to be dukes: only never come back hither;
since, dukes or _no_ dukes, to the rest of Christendom, to _us_ of
the Channel Islands you will always be transported felons.' There is
therefore a good right of action, _i.e._, a good ground of war, against
Jersey, on the part of Great Britain, since, besides the atrocious
injury inflicted, this unprincipled little island has the audacity to
regard our England, (all Europe looking on,) as existing only for the
purposes of a sewer or cess-pool to receive _her_ impurities. Some time
back I remember a Scottish newspaper holding up the case as a newly
discovered horror in the social system. But, in a quiet way Jersey has
always been engaged in this branch of exportation, and rarely fails to
'run' a cargo of rogues upon our shore, once or so in the season. What
amuses one besides, in this Scottish denunciation of the villany, is,
that Scotland [Footnote: To banish them 'forth of the kingdom,' was the
_euphuismus_; but the reality understood was--to carry the knaves, like
foxes in a bag, to the English soil, and there unbag them for English
use.] of old, pursued the very same mode of jail-delivery as to knaves
that were not thought ripe enough for hanging: she carted them to
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