To pry into secrets, to open or even read the letters of others,
to play the spy upon their words and looks and actions; what
habits more inconvenient in society? What habits, of consequence,
more blameable?
This principle is also the foundation of most of the laws of good
manners; a kind of lesser morality, calculated for the ease of
company and conversation. Too much or too little ceremony are
both blamed, and everything, which promotes ease, without an
indecent familiarity, is useful and laudable.
Constancy in friendships, attachments, and familiarities, is
commendable, and is requisite to support trust and good
correspondence in society. But in places of general, though
casual concourse, where the pursuit of health and pleasure brings
people promiscuously together, public conveniency has dispensed
with this maxim; and custom there promotes an unreserved
conversation for the time, by indulging the privilege of dropping
afterwards every indifferent acquaintance, without breach of
civility or good manners.
Even in societies, which are established on principles the most
immoral, and the most destructive to the interests of the general
society, there are required certain rules, which a species of
false honour, as well as private interest, engages the members to
observe. Robbers and pirates, it has often been remarked, could
not maintain their pernicious confederacy, did they not establish
a pew distributive justice among themselves, and recall those
laws of equity, which they have violated with the rest of
mankind.
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