Few indeed, if any, were the obligations in a proper sense moral which pressed upon the Roman. The main fountains of moral obligation had in Rome, by law or by custom, been thoroughly poisoned. Marriage had corrupted itself through the facility of divorce, and through the consequences of that facility (viz., levity in choosing, and fickleness in adhering to the choice), into so exquisite a traffic of selfishness, that it could not yield so much as a phantom model of sanctity. The relation of husband and wife had, for all moral impressions, perished amongst the Romans. The relation of father and child had all its capacities of holy tenderness crushed out of it under the fierce pressure of penal and vindictive enforcements. The duties of the client to his patron stood upon no basis of simple gratitude or simple fidelity (corresponding to the feudal fealty), but upon a basis of prudential terror; terror from positive law, or from social opinion. From the first intermeddling of law with the movement of the higher moral affections, there is an end to freedom in the act – to purity in the motive – to dignity in the personal relation. Accordingly, in the France of the pre-revolutionary period, and in the China of all periods, it has been with baleful effects to the national morals that positive law has come in aid of the paternal rights. And in the Rome of ancient history it may be said that this one original and rudimental wrong done to the holy freedom of human affections, had the effect of extinguishing thenceforward all conscientious movement in whatever direction. And thus, amongst a people naturally more highly principled than the Greeks, if you except ebullitions of public spirit and patriotism (too often of mere ignoble nationality), no class of actions stood upon any higher basis of motive than (1.) legal ordinance; (2.) superstitious fear; or (3.) servile compliance with the insolent exactions of popular usage. Strange, therefore, it would have been if the tutor of obscure orphans, with extra temptations, and extra facilities for indulging them, should have shown himself more faithful to his trust than the governor of provinces – prætorian or proconsular. Yet who more treacherous and rapacious than he? Rarest of men was the upright governor that accepted no bribes from the criminal, and extorted no ransoms from the timid. He nevertheless, as a public trustee, was watched by the jealousy of political competitors, and had by possibility a solemn audit to face in the senate or in the forum; perhaps in both. But the tutor, who administered a private trust on behalf of orphans, might count on the certainty that no public attention could ever be attracted to concerns so obscure, and politically so uninteresting. Reasonably, therefore, and by all analogy, a Roman must have regarded the ordinary domestic tutor as almost inevitably a secret delinquent using the opportunities and privileges of his office as mere instruments for working spoliation and ruin upon the inheritance confided to his care. This deadly and besetting evil of Pagan days must have deepened a hundredfold the glooms overhanging the death-beds of parents. Too often the dying father could not fail to read in his own life-long experience, that, whilst seeing special protection for his children, he might himself be introducing amongst them a separate and imminent danger. Leaving behind him a little household of infants, a little fleet (as it might be represented) of fairy pinnaces, just raising their anchors in preparation for crossing the mighty deeps of life, he made signals for ›convoy.‹ Some one or two (at best imperfectly known to him), amongst those who traversed the same seas, he accepted in that character; but doubtfully, sorrowfully, fearfully; and at the very moment when the faces of his children were disappearing amongst the vapours of death, the miserable thought would cross his prophetic soul – that too probably this pretended ›convoy,‹ under the strong temptations of the case, might eventually become pirates; robbers, at the least; and by possibility wilful misleaders to the inexperience of his children.

From this dreadful aggravation of the anguish at any rate besetting the death-beds of parents summoned away from a group of infant children, there has been a mighty deliverance wrought in a course of centuries by the vast diffusion of Christianity. In these days, wheresoever an atmosphere is breathed that has been purified by Christian charities and Christian principles – this household pestilence has been continually dwindling: and in the England of this generation there is no class of peculation which we so seldom hear of: one proof of which is found in the indifference with which most of us regard the absolute security offered to children by the Court of Chancery. My father, therefore, as regarded the quiet of his dying hours, benefited by the felicity of his times and his country. He made the best selection for the future guardianship of his six children that his opportunities allowed; from his circle of intimate friends, he selected the four who stood highest in his estimation for Honour and practical wisdom: which done, and relying for the redressing of any harsh tendencies in male guardians upon the discretional power lodged in my mother, thenceforth he rested from his anxieties. Not one of these guardians but justified his choice so far as honour and integrity were concerned. Yet, after all, there is a limit (and sooner reached perhaps in England than in other divisions of Christendom) to the good that can be achieved in such cases by prospective wisdom. For we, in England, more absolutely than can be asserted of any other nation, are not fainéans: rich and poor, all of us have something to do. To Italy it is that we must look for a peasantry idle through two-thirds of their time. To Spain it is that we must look for an aristocracy physically11 degraded under the ignoble training of women and priests; and for princes (such as Ferdinand VII.) that make it the glory of their lives to have embroidered a petticoat. Amongst ourselves of this current generation, whilst those functions of guardianship may be surely counted on which presume conscientious loyalty to the interests of their wards; on the other hand, all which presume continued vigilance and provision from afar are, in simple truth, hardly compatible with our English state of society. The guardians chosen by my father, had they been the wisest and also the most energetic of men, could not in many conceivable emergencies have fulfilled his secret wishes. Of the four men, one was a merchant (not in the narrow sense of Scotland, derived originally from France, where no class of merchant princes has ever existed, but in the large noble sense of England – of Florence – of Venice): consequently his extensive relations with sea-ports and distant colonies continually drawing off his attention, and even his personal presence, from domestic affairs, made it hopeless that he should even attempt more on behalf of his wards than slightly to watch the administration of their pecuniary interests. A second of our guardians was a rural magistrate, but in a populous district close upon Manchester, which even at that time was belted with a growing body of turbulent aliens – Welsh and Irish.