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/481

 If we examine the sin of calumny by this rule, we shall find both the motives and consequences of the worst kind. We shall find its causes and effects concurring to distinguish it from common wickedness, and rank it with those crimes that pollute the earth, and blacken human nature.

The most usual incitement to defamation is envy, or impatience of the merit, or success of others; a malice raised not by any injury received, but merely by the sight of that happiness which we cannot attain. This is a passion, of all others most hurtful and contemptible; it is pride complicated with laziness; pride which inclines us to wish ourselves upon the level with others, and laziness which hinders us from pursuing our inclinations with vigour and assiduity. Nothing then remains but that the envious man endeavour to stop those, by some artifice, whom he will not strive to overtake, and reduce his superiours to his own meanness, since he cannot rise to their elevation. To this end he examines their conduct with a resolution to condemn it; and, if he can find no remarkable defects, makes no scruple to aggravate smaller errours, till by adding one vice to another, and detracting from their virtues by degrees, he has divested them of that reputation which obscured his own, and left them no qualities to be admitted or rewarded.

Calumnies are sometimes the offspring of resentment. When a man is opposed in a design which he cannot justify, and defeated in the prosecution of schemes of tyranny, extortion, or oppression, he seldom fails to revenge his overthrow by blackening that integrity which effected it. No rage is more fierce than that of a villain disappointed of those advantages which he has pursued by a long train of wickedness. He has forfeited the esteem of mankind, he has burdened his conscience, and hazarded his future happiness, to no purpose, and has now nothing to hope but the satisfaction of involving those, who have broken his measures, in misfortunes and disgrace. By wretches like these it is no wonder if the vilest arts of detraction are practised without scruple, since both their re