I
ask you, then: May this maxim of Escobar be followed by bankrupts with
a safe conscience, or no? And take care what you say. If you answer,
"No," what becomes of your doctor, and your doctrine of probability?
If you say, "Yes," I delate you to the Parliament.
In this predicament I must now leave you, fathers; for my limits
will not permit me to overtake your next accusation, which respects
homicide. This will serve for my next letter, and the rest will
follow.
In the meanwhile, I shall make no remarks on the advertisements
which you have tagged to the end of each of your charges, filled as
they are with scandalous falsehoods. I mean to answer all these in a
separate letter, in which I hope to show the weight due to your
calumnies. I am sorry, fathers, that you should have recourse to
such desperate resources. The abusive terms which you heap on me
will not clear up our disputes, nor will your manifold threats
hinder me from defending myself You think you have power and
impunity on your side; and I think I have truth and innocence on mine.
It is a strange and tedious war when violence attempts to vanquish
truth. All the efforts of violence cannot weaken truth, and only serve
to give it fresh vigour. All the lights of truth cannot arrest
violence, and only serve to exasperate it. When force meets force, the
weaker must succumb to the stronger; when argument is opposed to
argument, the solid and the convincing triumphs over the empty and the
false; but violence and verity can make no impression on each other.
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