VIRTUE.
(The Exclamation of Brutus.)

Brutus, according to Plutarch, employed his last dying words in decrying virtue. “Unhappy virtue,” cried he, “how have I been deceived in thy service! I believed thou wert a real being, and devoted myself to thee on that account; but thou art only a vain name, a phantom, the prey and slave of fortune.” He was not so much in the wrong as is imagined, and is so far from deserving to be condemned in all respects, that, on the contrary, we ought to say that, perhaps never Pagan said a thing more just and reasonable; but to discover this, we must put ourselves in that Roman’s place. He had considered virtue, justice, and right, as absolute and real things; I mean as beings, whose force was superior to that of injustice, and which soon or late would place their followers above the accidents and outrages of fortune; but he experienced quite the contrary. He saw the side of justice, the cause of liberty, a second time at the foot of a rebellious party; he saw Mark Antony, the most profligate man alive, with hands imbrued in the blood of the most illustrious citizens of Rome, pull those to the ground who were asserting the liberty of the Roman people: thus he found himself miserably abused in the idea he had formed of virtue; he had gained nothing in its service but the choice of killing himself, or becoming the sport of a usurper, while Mark Antony was favoured with occasions of gratifying all his passions in the service of injustice. This made Brutus say that virtue had no reality, and that a wise man, and one who would not be bubbled, ought to look upon it as an empty name, and not as a reality. But was he not wrong in saying this? Let us distinguish: in the general thesis, and absolutely speaking, he advanced a great absurdity, and an impious falsity.

According to his own hypothesis, and considering the system he had formed to himself, his complaints were well grounded. It may also be said that the Pagans, in the obscurity wherein they lived, as to another life, reasoned very inconsequentially on the reality of virtue. It belongs to Christians alone to argue upon it aright, and, if those good things to come, which the Scripture promises the faithful, were not joined to the exercise of virtue, that and innocency might be placed in the number of those things on which Solomon pronounces his definitive decree, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” To trust to one’s innocency, would be to trust to a broken reed, which pierces the hand of him that leans upon it. God, as being the disposer of events, and the distributer of good and bad success on earth, has submitted virtue and innocency to general laws, no less than health and riches. One of the most considerable states of Europe lost and gained by turns, as long as it made only unjust wars; nay, it gained more than it lost. Ever since it has been engaged only in just wars, it does nothing but lose. How happens this? It was powerful at that time and now is not so. To conclude, whoever shall go upon Brutus’s system, and look upon virtue as the fountain of good temporal successes, may happen one day to complain, as he did, of having taken that for a reality which is only a name.

But let us beware of the headstrong reflections of those extravagant spirits, who pretend, that to have an ill cause is the readiest way to carry it. We say on the contrary, that all things being in other respects equal, reason and justice on our side is a good step towards the victory. How great soever the disorders of human kind are, they are not yet come to such a height that it can with truth be said, that right averts or retards the victory. I was not long ago This was written in 1698. ¹⁴⁸ in company where

the discourse turned upon two princes, who had been named for a very high dignity: opinions were not much divided; almost all agreed that such a one would baffle the pretensions of his competitor. They grounded themselves on several reasons, which were particularized, as the interest of all Europe to favour one of the two pretenders, the situation of the countries whence each was to expect assistance, the overgrown power of the promoter of him whose ill success was foretold, and a hundred other considerations besides. “And now you think you have said all,” said a Frenchman sullenly, who had not spoken a word before, “but it is a mistake; I will give you one reason stronger than all. A certain person has right of his side, his election is regular, and therefore he must sink; the election of another has all possible defects; it is contrary to the most essential formalities, and to the fundamental laws of the nation; that alone were enough to secure him the superiority and the triumph.” This argument was laughed at; but some, who were by, were willing to give themselves the trouble of coolly examining it, and these alleged that injustice, in itself, is fitter to prejudice a cause than to forward it, and that it is only by accident that justice is an obstacle to good success on several occasions. It happens very often that they who are concerned for a good cause are less active than their adversaries. They flatter themselves, like Brutus, that heaven will declare for them; they imagine that right needs less support than injustice; hereupon they slacken their vigilance, and sometimes they are such honest people that they would not make use of ill means to support the good cause. But they, who are engaged in bad causes, scruple not to add iniquity to iniquity; and if they doubt the success, they have recourse, with an extreme activity, to all imaginable expedients; they forget nothing that may either forward their own work, or retard the progress of the enemy, although on some occasions they miscarry, because they dare not be wicked enough. It may also be supposed in the hypothesis of good and bad angels, that, from the same principles, the latter are much more active. However it be, there is no arguing from the justice or the injustice of a cause, to its good or ill success; and, except in cases where God works by miracle, which happens but seldom, the fate of a business depends on the circumstances, and the concurrence of the means that are used; whereby it sometimes happens that injustice miscarries, and that one may say, “tandem bona causa triumphat. ---The good cause triumphs at last.”—Art. Brutus.