_Jaff_. Yes, if my heart would let me-- This proud, this swelling heart: home I would go, But that my doors are hateful to mine eyes, Filled and dammed up with gaping creditors, Watchful as fowlers when their game will spring; I have now not fifty ducats in the world, Yet still I am in love, and pleased with ruin. O, Belvidera! oh! she is my wife-- And we will bear our wayward fate together, But ne'er know comfort more. _Enter_ PIERRE. _Pier_. My friend, good-morrow! How fares the honest partner of my heart? What, melancholy! not a word to spare me? _Jaff_. I'm thinking, Pierre, how that damned starving quality Called honesty got footing in the world. _Pier_. Why, powerful villany first set it up, For its own ease and safety: honest men Are the soft easy cushions on which knaves Repose and fatten. Were all mankind villains, They'd starve each other; lawyers would want practice, Cut-throats rewards; each man would kill his brother Himself, none would be paid or hanged for murder. Honesty was a cheat invented first To bind the hands of bold deserving rogues, That fools and cowards might sit safe in power, And lord it uncontrolled above their betters. _Jaff_. Then honesty's but a notion? _Pier_. Nothing else: Like wit, much talked of, not to be defined, He that pretends to most, too, has least share in't; 'Tis a ragged virtue: honesty! no more on't. _Jaff._ Sure thou art honest? _Pier._ So indeed men think me; But they're mistaken, Jaffier: I am a rogue As well as they; A fine, gay, bold-faced villain, as thou seest me: 'Tis true, I pay my debts when they're contracted; I steal from no man; would not cut a throat To gain admission to a great man's purse, Or a whore's bed; I'd not betray my friend, To get his place or fortune: I scorn to flatter A blown-up fool above, or crush the wretch Beneath me.-- Yet, Jaffier, for all this, I am a villain. _Jaff._ A villain! _Pier._ Yes, a most notorious villain: To see the sufferings of my fellow-creatures, And own myself a man; to see our senators Cheat the deluded people with a show Of liberty, which yet they ne'er must taste of. They say, by them our hands are free from fetters, Yet whom they please they lay in basest bonds; Bring whom they please to infamy and sorrow; Drive us like wrecks down the rough tide of power, Whilst no hold's left to save us from destruction: All that bear this are villains, and I one, Not to rouse up at the great call of nature, And check the growth of these domestic spoilers, That make us slaves, and tell us 'tis our charter. _Jaff._ O Aquilina! friend, to lose such beauty, The dearest purchase of thy noble labours! She was thy right by conquest, as by love.