AGE 66.] NONJURORS. 273 shifts to maintain himself." BOSWELL. "I should think, Sir, that a man who took the oaths contrary to his principles, was a determined wicked man, because he was sure he was committing perjury, whereas a Nonjuror might be insensibly led to do what was wrong, without being so directly conscious of it." JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, a man who goes to bed to his patron's wife is pretty sure that he is committing wickedness." BOSWELL. "Did the nonjuring clergymen do so, Sir?" JOHNSON. "I am afraid many of them did." I was startled at this argument, and could by no means think it convincing. Had not his own father complied with the requisition of government (as to which he once observed to me, when I pressed him upon it, " That, Sir, he was to settle with himself," he would probably have thought more unfavourably of a Jacobite who took the oaths: Mr. Strahan talked of launching into the great ocean of London, in order to have a chance for rising into eminence; and, observing that many men were kept back from trying their fortunes there, because they were born to a competency, said, 1 This was not merely a cursory remark; for in his Life of Fenton he observes, "With many other wise and virtuous men, who at that time of discord and debate [about the beginning of this century], consulted conscience well or ill formed, more than interest, he doubted the legality of the government; and refusing to qualify himself for publick employment, by taking the oaths required, left the University without a degree." This conduct Johnson calls "perverseness of integrity." The question concerning the morality of taking oaths, of whatever kind, imposed by the prevailing power at the time, rather than to be excluded from all consequence, or even any considerable usefulness in society, has been agitated with all the acuteness of casuistry. It is related, that he who devised the oath of abjuration, profligately boasted that he had framed a test which should "damn one half of the nation, and starve the other." Upon minds not exalted to inflexible rectitude, or minds in which zeal for a party is predominant to excess, taking that oath against conviction, may have been palliated under the plea of necessity, or ventured upon in heat, as upon the whole producing more good than evil. At a county election in Scotland, many years ago, when there was a warm contest between the friends of the Hanoverian succession, and those against it, the oath of abjuration having been demanded, the freeholders upon one side rose to go away. Upon which a very sanguine gentleman, one of their number, ran to the door to stop them, calling out with much earnestness, Stay, stay, my friends, and let us swear the rogues out of it!" VOL. II. T |