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GUY MANNERING.

owns neither law nor magistracy. The question of resistance, or submission, must be determined by my means and situation. But if, armed and equal in force, I submit to injustice and violence from any man, high or low, I presume it will hardly be attributed to religious or moral feeling in me, or in any one but a quaker. An aggression on my honour seems to me much the same. The insult, however trifling in itself, is one of much deeper consequence to all views of life than any wrong which can be inflicted by a depredator on the highway, and redress is much less in the power of public jurisprudence, or rather it is entirely beyond its reach. If any man chuses to rob Arthur Mervyn of the contents of his purse, if he has not means of defence, or the skill and courage to use them, the assizes at Lancaster or Carlisle will do him justice by tucking up the robber:—Yet who will say I am bound to wait for this justice, and submit to being plundered in the first instance, if 1 have myself the