Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/478

 for the sake of disguising it with circumstances of probability, and propagate it industriously, till it becomes popular, and takes root in the minds of men, is such a continued act of malice, as nothing can palliate.

Nor will it be a sufficient vindication to allege, that the report, though not wholly, yet in part is true, and that it was no unreasonable suspicion that suggested the rest. For, if suspicion be admitted for certainty, every man's happiness must be entirely in the power of those bad men, whose consciousness of guilt makes them easily judge ill of others, or whom a natural, or habitual jealousy inclines to imagine frauds or villanies, where none is intended. And if small failings may be aggravated at the pleasure of the relater, who may not, however cautious, be made infamous and detestable? A calumny, in which falsehood is complicated with truth, and malice is assisted with probability, is more dangerous, and, therefore, less innocent, than unmixed forgery, and groundless invectives.

Neither is the first author only of a calumny a "false witness against his neighbour," but he, likewise, that disseminates and promotes it; since, without his assistance, it would perish as soon as it is produced, would evaporate in the air without effect, and hurt none but him that uttered it. He that blows a fire for the destruction of a city, is no less an incendiary than he that kindled it. And the man that imagines he may, without a crime, circulate a calumny which he has received from another, may, with equal reason, conceive that though it be murder to prepare poisons, it may be innocent to disperse them.

Many are the pleas and excuses, with which those, who cannot deny this practice, endeavour to palliate it. They frequently assert, in their own justification, that they do not know the relation, which they hand about, to be false. But to those it may be justly replied, that before they spread a report to the prejudice of others, they ought, if not to know that it is true, at least to believe it upon some reasonable grounds. They ought not to assist a