fever. Now the English law would assign a half of the money to each brother. If John demands his half, is he a just man? Every one I think will perceive that he is not, and that, if he demanded it, he would violate the duties of benevolence. The law is not his sufficient rule.

A person whose near relations do not stand in need of his money, adopts the children of distant relatives, with the declared intention or manifest design of providing for them at his death. If, under such circumstances, he dies without a will, the heir at law could not morally avail himself of his legal privilege, to the injury of these expectant parties. They need the money, and he does not; which is one good reason for not seizing it; but the intention of the deceased invested them with a right; and so that the intention is known, it matters little to the moral obligation, whether it is expressed on paper

or not.

Possibly some reader may say, that if an heir or legatee must always institute enquiries into the uncertain claims of others before he accepts the property of the deceased, and if he is obliged to give up his own claims whenever their's seem to preponderate, he will be involved in endless doubts and scruples, and testators will never know whether their wills will be executed or not: the answer is, that no such scrupulousness is demanded. Hardheartedness, and extreme unreasonableness, and injustice, are one class of considerations; critical scruples, and uncertain claims, are another.

It may be worth a paragraph to remark, that it is to be feared some persons think too complacently of their charitable bequests, or, what is worse, hope that it is a species of good works which will counterbalance the offence of some present irregularities of conduct. Such bequests ought not to be discouraged; and yet it should be remembered, that he who gives money after his death, parts with nothing of his own. He gives it only when he cannot retain it. The man who leaves his money for the single purpose of doing good, does right: but he who hopes that it is a work of merit, should remember that the money is given, that the privation is endured, not by himself but by his heirs. A man who has more than he needs, should dispense it whilst it is his own.

dishonesty in one person by tempting the probity of another. The youth, too, is of all persons the last who should profit by the punishment of the trader. He is reprehensible himself: young men who contract such debts are seldom so young or so ignorant as not to know that they are doing wrong.

A man's wife "runs him into debt" by extravagant purchases which he is alike unable to prevent or to afford. Many persons sell goods to such a woman, who are conscious of her habits and of the húsband's situation, yet continue to supply her extravagance, because they know the law will enable them to enforce payment from the husband. These persons act legally, but they are legally wicked. Do they act as they would desire others to act towards them? Would one of these men wish another tradesman so to supply his own wife if she was notoriously a spendthrift? If not, morality condemns his conduct: and the laws, in effect, condemn it too; for the Legislature would not have made husbands responsible for their wives' debts any more than for their children's, but for the presump tion that the wife generally buys what the husband approves. Debts of unprincipled extravagance, are not debts which the law intended to provide that the husband should pay. If all women contracted such debts, the Legislature would instantly alter the law. If the Legislature could have made the distinction, perhaps it would have made it; since it did not or could not, the deficiency must be supplied by private integrity.

BILLS OF EXCHANGE. The law of England provides, that if the possessor of a Bill of Exchange fails to demand payment on the day on which it becomes due, he takes the responsibility, in case of its eventual non-payment, from the previous endorsers, and incurs it himself. This as a general rule may be just. A party may be able to pay to-day and unable a week hence; and if in such a case a loss arises by one man's negligence, it were manifestly unreasonable that it should be sustained by others. But if the acceptor becomes unable to pay a week or a month before the bill is due, the previous endorsers cannot in justice throw the loss upon the last possessor, even though he fails to present it on the appointed day. For why did the law make its provision? In order to secure persons from the loss of their property by the negligence of others over whom they had no control. But, in the supposed case, the loss is not occasioned by any such cause, and therefore the spirit of the law does not apply to it. You are insisting upon its literal, in opposition to its just, interpretation. Whether the Bill was presented on the right day or the wrong, makes no difference to the previous endorsers, and for such a case the law was not made.

A similar rule of virtue applies to the case of giving notice of refusal to accept or to pay. If, in consequence of the want of this notice, the party is subjected to loss, he may avail himself of the legal exemption from the last possessor's claim. If the want of notice made no difference in his situation, he may not.

MINORS' DEBTS.-A young man under twentyone years of age purchases articles of a tradesman, of which some are necessary and some are not. Payment for unnecessary articles cannot be enforced by the English law-the reason with the Legislature being this, that thoughtless youths might be practised upon by designing persons, and induced to make needless and extravagant purchases. But is the youth who purchases unnecessary articles with the promise to pay when he becomes of age, exempted from the obligation? Now it is to be remembered, generally, that this obligation is not founded upon the Law of the Land, and therefore that the law cannot dispense with it. But if the tradesman has actually taken advantage of the inexperience of a youth, to cajole him into debts of which he was not conscious of the amount or the impropriety, it does not appear that he is obliged to SHIPMENTS. The same principles apply to a cirpay them; and for this reason, that he did not, in cumstance which not unfrequently occurs amongst any proper sense of the term, come under an oblimen of business, and in which integrity is, I think, gation to pay them. In other cases, the obligation very commonly sacrificed to interest. A tradesman remains. The circumstance that the law will not in Falmouth is in the habit of purchasing goods of assist the creditor to recover the money, does not merchants in London, by whom the goods are fordispense with it. It is fit, no doubt, that these dis- warded in vessels to Falmouth. Now it is a rule of honourable tradesmen should be punished, though law founded upon established custom, that goods the mode of punishing them is exceptionable indeed. when shipped are at the risk of the buyer. The It operates as a powerful temptation to fraud in law, however, requires that an account of the shipyoung men, and it is a bad system to discouragement shall be sent to the buyer by post, in order

-The contrivers of this abandoned iniquity possessed the effrontery to come afterwards to the gentleman whom they had defrauded, to offer to compound the matter; to send back the sheep which were of the value perhaps of fifty pounds, if he would give them thirty pounds in money. He refused to countenance such wickedness by the remotest implication, and sent them away to enjoy all their plunder.

take into account. The authority which requires us to be just, requires us to be compassionate and kind. And here, as in many other cases, it may be remarked, that the object of the law in allowing landlords to seize whatever they find, was to protect them from fraud, and not to facilitate the oppression of under-tenants and others. If the first tenant has practised no fraud, it seems a violation of the intention of the law, to enforce it against those who happen to have entrusted their property in his hands.

that, if he thinks proper, he may insure his goods: and in order to effect this object, the law directs, that if the account be not sent, and the vessel is, wrecked, it will not enforce payment from the buyer. All this as a general rule is just. But in the actual transactions of business, goods are very frequently sent by sea by an expressed or tacit agreement between the parties without notice by the post. The Falmouth tradesman then is in the habit of thus conducting the matter for a series of Theoretically, perhaps no seizures are unjust when years. He habitually orders his goods to be sent no fraud is practised by the landlord. because perby ship, and the merchant, as habitually, with the sons who entrust their property on the premises of buyer's knowledge, sends the invoice with them. another, are supposed to know the risk, and volunOf course the buyer is not in the habit of insuring. tarily to undertake it. But, in practice, this risk is At length a vessel is wrecked and a package is lost. often not thought of and not known. Besides, mere When the merchant applies for payment, the trades-justice is not the only thing which a landlord has to man says-" No; you sent no invoice by post: I shall not pay you, and I know you cannot compel me by law." Now this conduct I think is condemned by morality. The man in Falmouth does not suffer any loss in consequence of the want of notice. He would not have insured if he had received it; and therefore the intention of the Legislature in withholding its assistance from the merchant, was not to provide for such a case. Thus to take advantage of the law without regard to its intention is unjust. Besides, the custom of sending the invoice with the goods rather than by post, is for the advantage of the buyer only-it saves him a shilling in postage. The understanding amongst men of business that the risk of loss at sea impends on buyers is so complete, that they habitually take that risk into account in the profits which they demand on their goods: sellers do not; and this again indicates the injustice of throwing the loss upon the seller when an accident happens at sea. Yet tradesmen, I believe, rarely practice any other justice than that which the law will enforce; as if not to be compelled by law were to be exempt from all moral obligation. It is hardly necessary to observe, that if the man in Falmouth was actually prevented from insuring by the want of an invoice by post, he has a claim of justice as well as of law upon the merchant in London.

DISTRAINTS.-It is well known that in distraints for rent, the law allows the landlord to seize whatever goods he finds upon the premises, without enquiring to whom they belong. And this rule, like many others, is as good as a general rule can be; since an unprincipled tenant might easily contrive to make it appear that none of the property was his own, and thus the landlord might be irremediably defrauded. Yet the landlord cannot always virtuously act upon the rule of law. A tenant who expects a distraint to-morrow, and of whose profligacy a lodger in the house has no suspicion, secretly removes his own goods in the night, and leaves the lodger's to be seized by the bailiff. The landlord ought not, as a matter of course, to take these goods, and to leave a family perhaps without a table or a bed. The law indeed allows it; but benevolence, but probity, does not.

A man came to a friend of mine and proposed to take a number of his sheep to graze. My friend agreed with him, and sent the sheep. The next day these sheep were seized by the man's landlord for rent. It was an artifice, preconcerted between the landlord and the tenant in order that the rent might be paid out of my friend's pocket! Did this landlord act justly? The reader says "No, he deserved a prison." And yet the seizure was permitted by the law; and if morality did not possess an authority superior to law, the seizure would have been just. Now, in less flagitious instances, the same regard to the dictates of morality is to be maintained notwithstanding the permissions of law.

UNJUST DEFENDANTS.-It does not present a very favourable view of the state of private principle, that there are so many who refuse justice to plaintiffs unless they are compelled to be just by the law. It is indisputable, that a multitude of suits are undertaken in order to obtain property or rights which the defendant knows he ought voluntarily to give up. Such a person is certainly a dishonest man. When the verdict is given against him, I regard him in the light of a convicted robber-differing from other robbers in the circumstance that he is tried at Nisi prius instead of the Crown bar. For what is the difference between him who takes what is another's and him who withholds it? This severity of censure applies to some who are sued fo damages. A man who, whether by design or inad. vertency, has injured another, and will not compen sate him unless he is legally compelled to do it, is surely unjust. Yet many of these persons seem to think that injury to property, or person, or character, entails no duty to make reparation except it be enforced. Why, the law does not create this duty, it only compels us to fulfil it. If the minds of such persons were under the influence of integrity, they would pay such debts without compulsion.This subject is one amongst the many upon which Public Opinion needs to be aroused and to be rectified.

When our estimates of moral character are adjusted to individual probity of principle, some of those who now pass in society as creditable persons, will be placed at the same point on the scale of morality, as many of those who are consigned to a jail.

EXTORTION. It is a very common thing for a creditor who cannot obtain payment from the person who owes him money, to practise a species of extortion upon his relations or friends. The man perhaps is insolvent and unable to pay, and the creditor threatens to imprison him in order to induce his friends to pay the money rather than allow him to be immured in a jail. This is not honest. Why should a person be deprived of his property because he has a regard for the reputation and comfort of another man? It will be said that the debtor's friends pay voluntarily; but it is only with that sort of willingness with which a traveller gives his purse to a footpad, rather than be violently assaulted or perhaps killed. Both the footpad and the creditor

are extortioners-one obtains money by threaten-
ing mischief to the person, and the other by threat-
ening pain to the mind. We do not say that their
actions are equal in flagitiousness, but we say that
both are criminal. It is said that, after the death
of Sheridan, and when a number of men of rank
were assembled to attend his funeral, a person ele-
gantly dressed and stating himself to be a relation
of the deceased, entered the chamber of death. He
urgently entreated to be allowed to view the face of
his departed friend, and the coffin lid was unscrewed.
The stranger pulled a warrant [out of his pocket
and arrested the body. It was probably a concerted
scheme to obtain a sum (which it is supposed was
five hundred pounds) that had been owing by the
deceased. The creditor doubtless expected that a
number of men of fortune would be present, who
would prefer losing five hundred pounds to suffer-
ing the remains of their friend to be consigned to
the police. The extortioner was successful: it is
said that Lord Sidmouth and another gentleman
paid the money.
Was this creditor an honest man?
If courts of Equity had existed adapted to such
cases, and the man were prosecuted, the consciences
of a jury would surely have impelled them to send
him to Newgate.

SLAVES. If a person left me an estate in Virginia or the West Indies, with a hundred slaves, the law of the land allows me to keep possession of both; the Moral Law does not. I should therefore hold myself imperatively obliged to give these persons their liberty. I do not say that I would manumit them all the next day; but if I deferred their liberation, it ought to be for their sakes, not my own: just as if I had a thousand pounds for a minor, my motive in withholding it from him would be exclusively his own advantage. Some persons who perceive the flagitiousness of slavery, retain slaves. Much forbearance of thought and language should be observed towards the man, in whose mind perhaps there is a strong conflict between conscience and the difficulty or loss which might attend a regard to its dictates. I have met with a feeling and benevolent person who owned several hundred slaves, and who, I believe, secretly lamented his own situation. I would be slow in censuring such a man, and yet it ought not to be concealed, that if he complied with the requisitions of the Moral Law, he would at least hasten to prepare them for emancipation. To endeavour to extricate oneself from the difficulty by selling the slaves, were self-imposition. A man may as well keep them in bondage himself as sell them to another who would keep them in it. A narrative has appeared in print of the conduct of a gentleman to whom a number of slaves had been bequeathed, and who acted towards them upon the principles which rectitude requires. He conveyed them to some other country, educated some, procured employment for others, and acted as a Christian towards all.

Upon similar grounds, an upright man should not accept a present of a hundred pounds from a person who had not paid his debts, nor become his legatee. If the money were not rightfully his, he cannot give it; if it be rightfully his creditors' it cannot be mine.

PRIVATEERS. Although familiarity with war occasions many obliquities in the moral notions of a people, yet the silent verdict of public opinion is, I think, against the rectitude of privateering. It is not regarded as creditable and virtuous; and this public disapprobation appears to be on the increase. Considerable exertion at least has been made, on the part of the American government, to abolish it.To this private plunderer himself I do not talk of

the obligations of morality; he has many lessons of virtue to learn before he will be likely to listen to such virtue as it is the object of these pages to recommend: but to him who perceives the flagitiousness of the practice, I would urge the consideration that he ought not to receive the plunder of a priva teer even at second hand. If a man ought not to be the legatee of a bankrupt, he ought not to be the legatee of him who gained his money by privateering. Yet it is to be feared that many who would not fit out a privateer, would accept the money which the owners had stolen. If it be stolen, it is not theirs to give; and what one has no right to give, another has no right to accept.

During one of our wars with France, a gentleman who entertained such views of integrity as these was partner in a merchant vessel, and, in spite of his representations, the other owners resolved to fit her out as a privateer. They did so, and she happened to capture several vessels. This gentleman received from time to time his share of the prizes, and laid it by; till, at the conclusion of the war, it amounted to a considerable sum. What was to be done with the money? He felt that, as an upright man, he could not retain the money; and he accordingly went to France, advertised for the owners of the captured vessels, and returned to them the amount. Such conduct, instead of being a matter for good men to admire, and for men of loose morality to regard as needless scrupulosity, ought, when such circumstances arise, to be an ordinary occurrence. I do not relate the fact because I think it entitles the party to any extraordinary praise. He was honest; and honesty was his duty. The praise, if praise be due, consists in this that he was upright where most men would have been unjust. Similar integrity upon parallel subjects may often be exhibited again-upon privateering it cannot often be repeated; for when the virtue of the public is great enough to make such integrity frequent, it will be great enough to frown privateering from the world.

At the time of war with the Dutch, about forty years ago, an English merchant vessel captured a Dutch Indiaman. It happened that one of the owners of the merchantman was one of the Society of Friends or Quakers. This society, as it objects to war, does not permit its members to share in such a manner in the profits of war. However, this person, when he heard of the capture, insured his share of the prize. The vessel could not be brought into port, and he received of the underwriters eighteen hundred pounds. To have retained this money would have been equivalent to quitting the society, so he gave it to his friends to dispose of it as justice might appear to prescribe. The state of public affairs on the Continent did not allow the trustees immediately to take any active measures to discover the owners of the captured vessel. The money, therefore, was allowed to accumulate. At the termination of the war with France, the circumstances of the case were repeatedly published in the Dutch journals, and the full amount of every claim that has been clearly made out has been paid by the

trustees.

CONFISCATIONS.-I do not know whether the history of confiscations affords any examples of persons who refused to accept the confiscated property. Yet, when it is considered under what circumstances these seizures are frequently made-of revolution and civil war, and the like, when the vindictive passions overpower the claims of justice and humanityit cannot be doubted that the acceptance of confis cated property has sometimes been an act irreconcilable with integrity. Look, for example, at the

consider whether he is in equity entitled to it or not. If, not being entitled, he accepts it, he is not an upright man. For who gives it to him? The government; that is, the trustee for the public. A government is in a situation not dissimilar to that of a trustee for a minor. It has no right to dispose of the public property according to its own will. Whatever it expends, except with a view to the public advantage, is to be regarded as so much fraud; and it is quite manifest that if the government has no right to give, the private person can have no right to receive. I know of no exception to the application of these remarks, except where the public have expressly delivered up a certain amount of revenue to be applied according to the inclination of the governing power.

Now, the equity of an individual's claims upon the

confiscations of the French Revolution. The Government which at the moment held the reins, doubtless sanctioned the appropriation of the property which they seized; and in so far the acceptance was legal. But that surely is not sufficient. Let an upright man suppose himself to be the neighbour of another who, with his family, enjoys the comforts of a paternal estate. In the distractions of political turbulence this neighbour is carried off and banished, and the estate is seized by order of the government. Would such a man accept this estate when the government offered it, without enquiry and consideration? Would he sit down in the warm comforts of plenty, whilst his neigh bour was wandering, destitute perhaps, in another land, and whilst his family were in sorrow and in want. Would he not consider whether the confiscation was consistent with justice and rectitude-public property must be founded upon his services and whether, if it were right with respect to the man, it was right with respect to his children and his wife, who perhaps did not participate in his offences? It may serve to give clearness to our perception to consider, that if Louis XVII. had been restored to the throne soon after his father's death, it is probable that many of the emigrants would have been reinstated in their possessions. Louis's restoration might have been the result of some intrigue, or of a battle. Do, then, the obligations of mankind as to enjoying the property of another, depend on such circumstances as battles and intrigues? If the returning emigrant would have rightfully repossessed his estate if the battle was successful, can the present occupier rightfully possess it if the battle is not successful? Is the result of a political manœuvre a proper rule to guide a man's conscience in retaining or giving up the houses and lands of his neighbours ? Politicians, and those who profit by confiscations, may be little influenced by considerations like these; but there are other men, who, I think, will perceive that they are important, and who, though confiscated property may never be offered to them, will be able to apply the principles which these considerations illustrate, to their own conduct in other affairs.

It is worthy of observation that in our own country," of all the persons who were enriched by the spoils of the religious houses, there was not one who suffered for his opinions during the persecution."* How can this be accounted for, except upon the presumption that those who were so willing to accept these spoils, were not remarkable for their fidelity to religion?

PUBLIC MONEY.-Some writers on political affairs declaim much against sinecures and "places ;' not always remembering that these things may be only modes of paying, and of justly paying, the servants of the public. It would, no doubt, be preferable that he who is rewarded for serving the public should be rewarded avowedly as such, and not by the salary of a nominal office, which is always filled whether the receiver deserves the money or not. Such a mode of remuneration would be more reasonable in itself, and more satisfactory to the people. However, if public men deserve the money they receive, the name by which the salary is designated is not of much concern. The great point is the desert. That this ought to be a great point with a government there can be no doubt; and it is indeed upon governments that writers are wont to urge the obligation.

But our business is with the receivers. May a person, morally, appropriate to his own use any amount of money which a government chooses to give him? No. Then, when the public money is offered to any man, he is bound in conscience to

• Sonthey's Book of tho Church, vol. 2.

to the public: not upon his services to a minister, not upon the partiality of a prince; but upon services actually performed or performing for the public. The degree in which familiarity with an ill custom diminishes our estimate of its viciousness is wonderful. If you propose to a man to come to some understanding with a guardian, by which he shall get a hundred pounds out of a ward's estate, he starts from you with abhorrence. Yet that same man, if a minister should offer him ten times as much of the public property, puts it complacently and thankfully into his pocket. Is this consistency? Is it uprightness?

In estimating the recompence to which public men are entitled, let the principles by all means be liberal. Let them be well paid: but let the money be paid, not given; let it be the discharge of a debt, not the making of a present. And were I a servant of the public, I should not assume as of course, that whatever remuneration the government was disposed to give, it would be right for me to receive. I should think myself obliged to consider for myself: and without affecting a trifling scrupulousness, I could not with integrity receive two thousand a year, if I knew that I was handsomely remunerated by one. These principles of conduct do not appear to lose their application in respect of fixed salaries or perquisites that are attached to offices. If a man cannot uprightly take two thousand pounds when he knows he is entitled to but one, it cannot be made right by the circumstance that others have taken it before him, or that all take it who accept office. The income may be exorbitantly disproportioned, not merely to the labour of the office, but to the total services of the individual. Nor, I think, do these principles lose their application, even when, as in this country, a sum is voted by the Legislature for the Civil List, and when it is out of this voted sum that the salaries are paid. You say the representatives of the people gave the individual the money. Yery well-yet even this may be true in theory rather than in fact. But who pretends that, when the votes for the Civil List are made in the House of Commons, its members actually consider whether the individuals to whom the money will be distributed are in equity entitled to it or not?— The question is very simple at last-whether a person may virtuously accept the money of the public, without having rendered proportionate services to the public? There have been examples of persons who have voluntarily declined to receive the whole of the sums allotted to them by the government; and when these sums were manifestly disproportion

It is not necessary that these services snould nave been personal. The widow or son of a man who had been inadequately remunerated during his life, may very properly accept a competent pension from the State.