Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 2).djvu/407

Rh whatever verdict the court shall please to recommend. No doubt that, as an incentive to his exertions, half goes to the informer. (What an army of spies and delators all Hell must afford, under the direction of that active magistrate, the Devil!) If the Devil takes but half the pleasure in tormenting a sinner which God does, who took the trouble to create him, and then to invent a system of casuistry by which he might excuse himself for devoting him to eternal torment, this reward must be considerable. Conceive how the enjoyment of one half of the advantages to be derived from their ruin, whether in person or property, must irritate the activity of a delator. Tiberius, or Bonaparte, or Lord Castlereagh, never affixed any reward to the disclosure or the creation of conspiracies, equal to that which God's Govermnent has attached to the exertions of the Devil, to tempt, betray, and accuse unfortunate man. These two considerable personages are supposed to have entered into a kind of partnership, in which the weaker has consented to bear all the odium of their common actions, and to allow the stronger to talk of himself as a very honourable person, on condition of having participation in what is the especial delight of both of them, burning men to all eternity. The dirty work is done by the Devil, in the same manner as some starving wretch will hire himself out to a king or minister, with a stipulation that he shall have some portion of the public spoil, as an instrument to betray a certain number of other starving wretches into circumstances of capital punishment, when they may think it convenient to edify the rest, by hanging up a few of those whose murmurs are too loud.