No two cases would be decided alike; you'd be adrift at once,
and a drifting ship soon touches bottom. No, that won't hold water.
Stick to general principles, and if a thing is an exception to the
rule, put it in Schedule A or B, and you know where to look for it.
General rules are fixed principles. But you are only talking for talk
sake; I know you are. Do you think now that merchant did right to aid
you in evading the duty on your leaden Washingtons?"
"What the plague had he to do with our revenue laws? They don't bind
him," sais I.
"No," said the doctor, "but there is a higher law than the statutes of
the States or of England either, and that is the moral law. In aiding
you, he made the greatest sale of lead ever effected at once in
England; the profit on that was his share of the smuggling. But you
are only drawing me out to see what I am made of. You are an awful man
for a bam. There goes old Lewis in his fishing boat," sais he. "Look
at him shaking his fist at you. Do you hear him jabbering away about
trying it out in the 'sperm court?'"
"I'll make him draw his fist in, I know," sais I. So I seized my
rifle, and stepped behind the mast, so that he could not see me; and
as a large grey gull was passing over his boat high up in the air, I
fired, and down it fell on the old coon's head so heavily and so
suddenly, he thought he was shot; and he and the others set up a yell
of fright and terror that made everybody on board of the little fleet
of coasters that were anchored round us, combine in three of the
heartiest, merriest, and loudest cheers I ever heard.
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