far other record to frame than that which now devolves to her. Can it be needful to argue upon such things? Can it be needful to prove that, neither the commands of ministers, nor "systems of policy," nor any other circumstance, exempts a public man from the obligations of the moral law? Public men often act as if they thought that to be a public man was to be brought under the jurisdiction of a new and a relaxed morality. They often act as if they thought that not to be the prime mover in political misdeeds, was to be exempt. from all moral responsibility for those deeds.

dagger, if it could think, would think it was not responsible for the assassination of which it was the agent. A public man may be a political dagger, but he cannot, like the dagger, be irresponsible.

These illustrations of immoral agency and of the obligation to avoid it might be multiplied, if enough had not been offered to make our sentiments, and the reasons upon which they are founded, obvious to the reader. Undoubtedly, in the present state of society, it is no easy task, upon these subjects, to wash our hands in innocency. But if we cannot avoid all agency, direct or indirect, in evil things, we can avoid much: and it will be sufficiently early to complain of the difficulty of complete purity, when we have dismissed from our conduct as much impurity as we can.

CHAPTER IX.

THE INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUALS UPON PUBLIC
NOTIONS OF MORALITY.

Public notions of morality-Errors of public opinion: their effects-Duelling-Glory-Military virtues-Military talentBravery-Courage-Patriotism not the soldier's motive-Military fame-Public opinion of unchastity: In women: In men -Power of character-Character in Legal men-Fame— Faults of great men—The Press-Newspapers-History: Its defects: Its power.

THAT the influence of public opinion upon the practice of virtue is very great, needs no proof. Of this influence the reader has seen some remarkable illustrations in the discussion of the efficacy of oaths in binding to veracity.* There is, indeed, almost no action and no institution which public opinion does not affect. In moral affairs it makes men call one mode of human destruction murderous and one honorable; it makes the same action abominable in one individual and venial in another: in public institutions, from a village workhouse to the constitution of a state, it is powerful alike for evil or for good. If it be misdirected, it will strengthen and perpetuate corruption and abuse; if it be directed aright, it will eventually remove corruptions and correct abuses with a power which no power can withstand.

In proportion to the greatness of its power is the necessity of rectifying public opinion itself. To contribute to its rectitude is to exercise exalted philanthropy to contribute to its incorrectness is to spread wickedness and misery in the world. The purpose of the present chapter is to remark upon some of those subjects on which the public opinion appears to be inaccurate, and upon the consequent obligation upon individuals not to perpetuate that inaccuracy and its Essay 2, chap. 7.

attendant evils by their conduct or their language. Of the positive part of the obligation-that which respects the active correction of common opinions little will be said. He who does not promote the evil can scarcely fail of promoting the good. A man often must deliver his sentiments respecting the principles and actions of others, and if he delivers them, so as not to encourage what is wrong, he will practically encourage what is right.

It might have been presumed of a people who assent to the authority of the moral law, that their notions of the merit or turpitude of actions would have been conformable with the doctrines which that law delivers. Far other is the fact. The estimates of the moral law and of public opinion are discordant to excess. Men have practiced a sort of transposition with the moral precepts, and have assigned to them arbitrary and capricious, and therefore new and mischievous, stations on the moral scale. The order both of the vices and the virtues is greatly deranged.

How, it may reasonably be asked, do these strange incongruities arise? First, men practise a sort of voluntary deception on themselves; they persuade themselves to think that an offence which they desire to commit, is not so vicious as the moral law indicates, or as others to which they have little temptation. They persuade themselves again, that a virtue which is easily practised, is of great worth, because they thus flatter themselves with complacent notions of their excellences at a cheap rate. Virtues which are difficult they, for the same reason, depreciate. This is the dictate of interest. It is manifestly good policy to think lightly of the value of a quality which we do not choose to be at the cost of possessing; and who would willingly think there was much evil in a vice which he practised every day? That which a man thus

persuades himself to think a trivial vice or an unimportant virtue, he of course speaks of as such amongst his neighbors. They perhaps are as much interested in propagating the delusion as he: they listen with willing ears, and cherish and proclaim the grateful falsehood. By these and by other means the public notions become influenced; a long continuance of the general chicanery at length actually confounds the public opinion; and when once an opinion has become a public opinion, there is no difficulty in accounting for the perpetuation of the fallacy.

If sometimes the mind of an individual recurs to the purer standard, a multitude of obstacles present themselves to its practical adoption. He hopes that under the present circumstances of society an exact obedience to the moral law is not required; he tries to think that the notions of a kingdom or a continent cannot be so erroneous; and at any rate trusts that as he deviates with millions, millions will hardly be held guilty at the bar of God. The misdirection of public opinion is an obstacle to the virtue even of good men. He who looks beyond the notions of others, and founds his moral principles upon the moral law, yet feels that it is more difficult to conform to that law when he is discountenanced by the general notions than if those notions supported and encouraged him. What then must the effect of such misdirection be upon those to whom acceptance in the world is the principal concern, and who, if others applaud or smile, seem to be indifferent whether their own hearts condemn them?

Now, with a participation in the evils which the misdirection of public opinion occasions, every one is chargeable who speaks of moral actions according to a standard that varies from that which Christianity has exhibited. Here is the cause of the evil, and here must be its remedy. "It is an important maxim in

morals as well as in education to call things by their right names."'* "To bestow good names on bad things, is to give them a passport in the world under a delusive disguise." "The soft names and plausible colors under which deceit, sensuality, and revenge are presented to us in common discourse, weaken by degrees our natural sense of the distinction between good and evil." Public notions of morality constitute a sort of line of demarcation, which is regarded by most men in their practice as a boundary between right and wrong. He who contributes to fix this boundary in the wrong place, who places evil on the side of virtue, or goodness on the side of vice, offends more deeply against the morality and the welfare of the world, than multitudes who are punished by the arm of law. If moral offences are to be estimated by their consequences, few will be found so deep as that of habitually giving good names to bad things. It is well indeed for the responsibility of individuals that their contribution to the aggregate mischief is commonly small. Yet every man should remember that it is by the contribution of individuals that the aggregate is formed; and that it can only be by the deductions of individuals that it will be done away.

DUELLING. If two boys who disagreed about a game of marbles or a penny tart, should therefore walk out by the river side, quietly take off their clothes, and when they had got into the water, each try to keep the other's head down until one of them was drowned, we should doubtless think that these two boys were mad. If, when the survivor returned to his schoolfellows, they patted him on the shoulder, told him he was a spirited fellow, and that, if he had not tried the feat in the water, they would never have played at mar* Rees's Encyclop. Art. Philos. Moral.

† Knox's Essays, No. 34.

Blair, Serm. 9.