His principal vices, so far as they affected the
peace of his family, were a brutal temper, and a most scandalous
dishonesty in pecuniary transactions, especially in his intercourse with
his own tenantry and tradesmen. Of moral obligation he seemed to possess
no sense or impression whatever. A single day never occurred in which
he was not guilty of some most dishonorable violation of his word to the
poor, and those who were dependent on him. Ill-temper therefore toward
herself, and the necessity of constantly witnessing a series of vile
and unmanly frauds upon a miserable scale, together with her incessant
efforts to instil into his mind some slight principle of common
integrity, had, during an unhappy life, so completely harassed a mind
naturally pure and gentle, and a constitution never strong, that, as
her daughter hinted, and as every one intimate with the family knew, she
literally fell a victim to the vices we have named, and the incessant
anxiety they occasioned her. These analogies, then, when unconsciously
alluded to by his daughter, brought tears to her eyes, and he felt that
the very grief she evinced was an indirect reproach to himself.
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