Britain; and all such as stood indebted, were invited to come forward and give their money, in this manner, towards the support of the contest in which America was then engaged." Now, according to the principles of Paley, these Virginian planters would have been justified, in foro conscientiæ, in defrauding the British merchants of the money which was their due. It is quite clear that the "design and intention of the law" was to allow the fraud-the planters were even invited to commit it; and yet the heart of every reader will tell him, that to have availed themselves of the legal permission, would have been an act of flagitious dishonesty. The conclusion is therefore distinct-that legal decisions respecting property, are not always a sufficient warrant for individual conduct. To the extreme disgrace of these planters it should be told, that although at first, when they would have gained little by the fraud, few of them paid their debts into the treasury, yet afterwards many large sums were paid. The Legislature offered to take the American paper money; and as this paper money, in consequence of its depreciation, was not worth a hundredth part of its value in specie, the planters, in thus paying their debts to their own government, paid but one pound instead of a hundred, and kept the remaining ninety-nine in their own pockets! Profligate as these planters and as this Legislature were, it is pleasant for the sake of America to add, that in 1796, after the Supreme Court of the United States had been erected, the British merchants brought the affair before it; and the judges directed that every one of these debts should again be paid to the rightful creditors.

It might be almost imagined that the moral philosopher designed to justify such conduct as that of the planters. He says, when a man "refuses to pay a debt of the reality of which he is conscious, he cannot plead the intention of the statute, unless he could show that the law intended to interpose its supreme authority to acquit men of debts of the existence and justice of which they were themselves sensible." Now the planters could show that this was the intention of the law, and yet they were not justified in availing themselves of it. The error of the moralist is founded in the assumption, that there is " supreme authority" in the law. Make that authority, as it really is, subordinate, and the error and the fallacious rule which is founded upon it, will be alike corrected.

In applying to the Law of the Land as a moral guide, it is of importance to distinguish its intention from its letter. The intention is not, indeed, as we have seen, a final consideration, but the design of a legislature is evidently of greater import, and consequent obligation, than the literal interpretation of the words in which that design is proposed to be expressed. The want of a sufficient attention to this simple rule, occasions many snares to private virtue, and the commission of much practical injustice. In consequence, partly of the inadequacy of all language, and partly of the inability of those who frame laws, accurately to provide for cases which subsequently arise, it happens that the literal application of a law, sometimes frustrates the intention of the legislator, and violates the obligations of justice. Whatever be the cause, it is found in practice, that courts of law usually regard the letter of a statute rather than its general intention; and hence it happens that many duties devolve upon individuals in the application of the laws in their own affairs. If legal courts usually decide by the letter, and if decision by the letter often defeats the objects of the

Mor, and Pol. Phil. b. 3, p. 1, c. 4.

legislator and the claims of justice, how shall these claims be satisfied except by the conscientious and forbearing integrity of private men? Of the cases in which this integrity should be brought into exercise, several examples will be offered in the early part of the next Essay.

CHAPTER II.

THE LAW OF NATURE.

Its authority-Limits to its authority-Obligations resulting from the Rights of Nature-Incorrect ideas attached to the word Nature.

WE here use the term, the Law of Nature, as a convenient title under which to advert to the authority, in moral affairs, of what are called Natural Instincts and Natural rights.

They who rank Pity among the original impulses of our nature, rightly contend that when this principle prompts us to the relief of human misery, it indicates the divine intention and our duty. Indeed, the same conclusion is deducible from the existence of the passion, whatever account be given of its origin. Whether it be an instinct or a habit, it is in fact a property of our nature which God appointed."*

I should reason similarly respecting Natural Rights-the right to life-to personal liberty-to a share of the productions of the earth. The fact that life is given us by our Creator-that our personal powers and mental dispositions are adapted by Him to personal liberty-and that He has constituted our bodies so as to need the productions of the earth, are satisfactory indications of the Divine Will, and of human duty.

So that we conclude the general proposition is true that a regard to the Law of Nature, in estimating human duty, is accordant with the Will of God. There is little necessity for formally insisting on the authority of the Law of Nature, because few are disposed to dispute that authority, at least when their own interests are served by appealing to it. If this authority were questioned, perhaps it might be said that the expression of the Divine Will tacitly sanctions it, because that expression is addressed to us under the supposition that our constitution is such as it is; and because some of the Divine precepts appear to specify a point at which the authority of the Law of Nature stops. To say that a rule is only in some cases wrong, is to say, that in many it is right: to which may be added the consideration, that the tendency of the Law of Nature is manifestly beneficial. No man questions that the " original impulses of our nature" tend powerfully to the well-being of the species.

In speaking of the Instincts of Nature, we enter into no curious definitions of what constitutes an instinct. Whether any of our passions or emotions be properly instinctive, or the effect of association, is of little consequence to the purpose, so long as they actually subsist in the human economy, and so long as we have reason to believe that their subsistence there is in accordance with the Divine Will.

But the authority of the Law of Nature, like every other authority, is subordinate to that of the Moral Law. This indeed is sufficiently indicated by those reasonings which show the universal supremacy of that law. Yet it may be of advantage to remember

Mor. and Pol. Phil. b. 3. p. 2. c. 5.

such expressions as these: "Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But fear him which, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell."* This appears distinctly to place an instinct of nature in subordination to the Moral Law. The "fear of them that kill the body," results from the instinct of selfpreservation; and by this instinct we are not to be guided when the Divine Will requires us to repress its voice.

Parental affection has been classed amongst the instincts. The declaration," He that loveth son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of me," clearly subjects this instinct to the higher authority of the Divine Will; for the "love" of God is to be manifested by obedience to his law. Another declaration to the same import subjects also the instinct of self-preservation: "If a man hate not (that is by comparison) his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." § And here it is remarkable, that these affections or instincts are adduced for the purpose of inculcating their subordination to the Moral Law.

Upon one of the most powerful instincts of nature, the restraints of revelation are emphatically laid. Its operation is restricted, not to a few of its possible objects, but exclusively to one; and to that one upon an express and specified condition. ||

The propriety of holding the natural impulses in subjection to a higher law, appears to be asserted in this language of Dugald Stewart: "The dictates of reason and conscience inform us, in language which it is impossible to mistake, that it is sometimes a duty to check the most amiable and pleasing emotions of the heart; to withdraw, for example, from the sight of those distresses which stronger claims forbid us to relieve, and to deny ourselves that exquisite luxury which arises from the exercise of humanity." Even that morality which is not founded upon religion, recommends the same truth. Godwin says, that if Fenelon were in his palace, and it took fire, and it so happened that the life either of himself or of his chambermaid must be sacrificed, it would be the duty of the woman to repress the instinct of selfpreservation, and sacrifice hers-because Fenelon would do more good in the world. If the morality of scepticism inculcates this subjugation of our instincts to indeterminate views of advantage, much more does the morality of the New Testament teach us to subject them to the determinate Will of God:

It is upon these principles that some of the most noble examples of human excellence have been exhibited-those of men who have died for the testi

mony of a good conscience. If the strongest of our instincts-if that instinct, excited to its utmost vigour by the apprehension of a dreadful death, might be of weight to suspend the obligation of the Moral Law, it surely might have been suspended in the case of those who thus proved their fidelity.

Yet, obvious as is the propriety and the duty of thus preferring the Divine Law before all, the dictates or the rights of nature are continually urged as of paramount obligation. Many persons appear to think that if a given action is dictated by the law of nature, it is quite sufficient. Respecting the instinct of self-preservation, especially, they appear to conclude that to whatever that instinct prompts, it is lawful to conform to its voice. They do not surely reflect upon the monstrousness of their opinions: they do not surely consider that they are absolutely superseding the Moral Law of God, and superseding it upon considerations resulting merely

from the animal part of our constitution. The Divine Laws respect the whole human economyour prospects in another world as well as our existence in the present.

Some men, again, speak of our rights in a state of nature, as if to be in a state of nature was to be without the jurisdiction of the Moral Law. But if man be a moral and responsible agent, that law applies every where; to a state of nature as truly as to every other state. If some other human being had been left with Selkirk on Juan Fernandez, and if that other seized an animal which Selkirk had ensnared, would Selkirk have been justified in asserting his natural right to the animal by whatever means! It is very possible that no means would have availed to procure the restoration of the rabbit or the bird short of killing the offender. Might Selkirk kill the man in assertion of his natural rights? Every one answers, No-because the unsophisticated dictates in every man's mind assure us that the rights of nature are subordinate to higher laws.

Situations similar to those of a state of nature sometimes arise in society;* as where money is demanded, or violence is committed by one person on another, where no third person can be called in to assistance. The injured party, in such a case, cannot go to every length in his own cause by virtue of the law of nature: he can go only so far as the Moral Law allows. These considerations will be found peculiarly applicable to the rights of selfdefence; and it is pleasant to find these doctrines supported by that sceptical morality to which we just now referred. The author of Political Justice maintains that man possesses no rights; that is, no absolute rights-none, of which the just exercise is not conditional upon the permission of a higher rule. That rule, with him, is "Justice"-with us it is the law of God; but the reasoning is the same in kind.

Nevertheless, the natural rights of man ought to possess extensive application both in private and political affairs. If it were sufficiently remembered, that these rights are abstractedly possessed in equality by all men, we should find many imperative claims upon us with which we do not now comply. The artificial distinctions of society induce forgetfulness of the circumstance that we are all brethren: not that I would countenance the speculations of those who think that all men should be now practically equal; but that these distinctions are such, that the general rights of nature are invaded in a degree which nothing can justify. There are natural claims of the poor upon the rich, of dependents upon their superiors, which are very commonly forgotten there are endless acts of superciliousness, and unkindness, and oppression, in private life, which the Law of Nature emphatically condemns. When, sometimes, I see a man of fortune speaking in terms of supercilious command to his servant, I feel that he needs to go and learn some lessons of the Law of Nature. I feel that he has forgotten what he is, and what he is not, and what his brother is: he has forgotten that by nature he and his servant are in strictness equal; and that although, by the permission of Providence, a various allotment is assigned to them now, he should regard every one with that consideration and respect which is due to a man and a brother. And when to these considerations are added those which result from the contemplation of our relationship to God-that we are the common objects of his bounty and his goodness, and that we are heirs to a common salvation, we are presented with such motives to pay attention to the rights of nature, as constitute an imperative obligation.

* See Locke on Gov. b. ii. c. 7.

The political duties which result from the Law of Nature, it is not our present business to investigate; but it may be observed here, that a very limited appeal to facts is sufficient to evince, that by many political institutions the Rights of Nature have been grievously sacrificed; and that if those Rights had been sufficiently regarded, many of these vicious institutions would never have been exhibited in the world.

It appears worth while at the conclusion of this chapter to remark, that a person when he speaks of Nature," should know distinctly what he means. The word carries with it a sort of indeterminate authority; and he who uses it amiss, may connect that authority with rules or actions which are little entitled to it. There are few senses in which the word is used, that do not refer, however obscurely, to God; and it is for that reason that the notion of authority is connected with the word. "The very

"Na

name of nature implies, that it must owe its birth to some prior agent, or, to speak properly, signifies in itself nothing.' * Yet, unmeaning as the term is, it is one of which many persons are very fond;whether it be that their notions are really indistinct, or that some purposes are answered by referring to the obscurity of nature rather than to God. ture has decorated the earth with beauty and magnificence,' "-" Nature has furnished us with joints and limbs," '—are phrases sufficiently unmeaning; and yet I know not that they are likely to do any other harm than to give currency to the common fiction. But when it is said, that "Nature teaches us to adhere to truth," -"Nature condemns us for dishonesty or deceit,"--" Men are taught by nature that they are responsible beings," there is considerable danger that we have both fallacious and injurious notions of the authority which thus teaches or condemns us. Upon this subject it were well to take the advice of Boyle: 66 Nature," he says, "is sometimes, indeed commonly, taken for a kind of semi-deity. In this sense it is best not to use it at all." It is dangerous to induce confusion into our ideas respecting our relationship with God.

A law of nature is a very imposing phrase; and it might be supposed, from the language of some persons, that nature was an independent legislatress, who had sat and framed laws for the government of mankind. Nature is nothing: yet it would seem that men do sometimes practically imagine, that a "law of nature" possesses proper and independent authority; and it may be suspected that with some the notion is so palpable and strong, that they set up the authority of "the law of nature" without reference to the will of God, or perhaps in opposition to it. Even if notions like these float in the mind only with vapoury indistinctness, a correspondent indistinctness of moral notions is likely to ensue. Every man should make to himself the rule, never to employ the word Nature when he speaks of ultimate moral authority. A law possesses no authority; the authority rests only in the legislator: and as nature makes no laws, a law of nature involves no obligation but that which is imposed by the Divine Will.

CHAPTER III.

UTILITY.

Obligations resulting from Expediency-Limits to these obligations.

THAT in estimating our duties in life we ought to pay regard to what is useful and beneficial--to what

Milton: Christian Doct. p. 14.

Free Inquiry into the vulgarly received Notions of Nature.

is likely to promote the welfare of ourselves and of others-can need little argument to prove. Yet, if it were required, it may be easily shown that this regard to Utility is recommended or enforced in the expression of the Divine Will. That Will requires the exercise of pure and universal benevolence ;which benevolence is exercised in consulting the interests, the welfare, and the happiness of mankind. The dictates of Utility, therefore, are frequently no other than the dictates of benevolence.

Or, if we derive the obligations of Utility from considerations connected with our reason, they do not appear much less distinct. To say that to consult Utility is right, is almost the same as to say, it is right to exercise our understandings. The daily and hourly use of reason is to discover what is fit to be done; that is, what is useful and expedient: and since it is manifest that the Creator, in endowing us with the faculty, designed that we should exercise it, it is obvious that in this view also a reference to expediency is consistent with the Divine Will.

When (higher laws being silent) a man judges that of two alternatives one is dictated by greater utility, that dictate constitutes an obligation upon him to prefer it. I should not hold a landowner innocent, who knowingly persisted in adopting a bad mode of raising corn; nor should I hold the person innocent who opposed an improvement in shipbuilding, or who obstructed the formation of a turnpike road that would benefit the public. These are questions, not of prudence merely, but of morals also.

There are,

Obligations resulting from Utility possess great extent of application to political affairs. indeed, some public concerns in which the Moral Law, antecedently, decides nothing. Whether a duty shall be imposed, or a charter granted, or a treaty signed, are questions which are perhaps to be determined by expediency alone: but when a public man is of the judgment that any given measure will tend to the general good, he is immoral if he opposes that measure. The immorality may indeed be made out by a somewhat different process:-such a man violates those duties of benevolence which religion imposes: he probably disregards, too, his sense of obligation; for if he be of the judgment that a given measure will tend to the general good, conscience will scarcely be silent in whispering that he ought not to oppose it.

It is sufficiently evident, upon the principles which have hitherto been advanced, that considerations of Utility are only so far obligatory as they are in accordance with the Moral Law. Pursuing, however, the method which has been adopted in the two last chapters, it may be observed, that this subserviency of Utility to the Divine Will, appears to be required by the written revelation. That habitual preference of futurity to the present time, which Scripture exhibits, indicates that our interests here should be held in subordination to our interests hereafter and as these higher interests are to be consulted by the means which revelation prescribes, it is manifest that those means are to be pursued, whatever we may suppose to be their effects upon the present welfare of ourselves or of other men. "If in this life only we have hope in God, then are we of all men most miserable." It certainly is not, in the usual sense of the word, expedient to be most miserable. And why did they thus sacrifice expediency? Because the communicated Will of God required that course of life by which human interests were apparently sacrificed. It will be perceived that these considerations result from the truth, (too little regarded in talking of "Expediency" and " General Benevolence,") that Utility, as it respects mankind, cannot be properly consulted without taking into account our interests

3-That it is of no force in opposition to the ghel Moral Law:

I. The obligation of the Law of Nations upon those who join in the convention, is plain-that is, dit rests, generally, upon all civilized communities her which have intercourse with one another. A tacit engagement only is, from the circumstances of the case, to be expected; and if any state did not choose to conform to the Law of Nations, it should publicly express its dissent. The Law of Nations is not edst wont to tighten the bonds of morality; so that prorofess bably most of its positive requisitions are enforced new by the Moral Law: and this consideration should defe operate as an inducement to a conscientious fulfildement of these requisitions. In time of war, the Law

of Nations prohibits poisoning and assassination, and edit is manifestly imperative upon every state to forbear them; but whilst morality thus enforces many 1x of the requisitions of the Law of Nations, that law by frequently stops short, instead of following on to ret whither morality would conduct it. This distinction

between assassination and some other modes of destruction that are practised in war, is not perhaps y very accurately founded in considerations of morality nevertheless, since the distinction is made, let it be made, and let it by all means be regarded. Men need not add arsenic and the private dagger to those modes of human destruction which war allows. The obligation to avoid private murder is clear, even (though it were shown that the obligation extends much further. Whatever be the reasonableness of the distinction, and of the rule that is founded upon it, it is perfidious to violate that rule.

So it is with those maxims of the Law of Nations which require that prisoners should not be enslaved, and that the persons of ambassadors should be respected. Not that I think the man who sat down, with only the principles of morality before him, would easily be able to show, from those principles, that the slavery was wrong whilst other things which the Law of Nations allows are right-but that, as these principles actually enforce the maxims, as the observance of them is agreed on by civilized states, and as they tend to diminish the evils of war, it is imperative on states to observe them. Incoherent and inconsistent as the Law of Nations is, when it is examined by the Moral Law, it is pleasant to contemplate the good tendency of some of its requisitions. In 1702, previous to the declaration of war by this country, a number of the anticipated "enemy's" ships had been seized and detained. When the declaration was made, these vessels were released, "in pursuance," as the proclamation stated, "of the Law of Nations." Some of these vessels were perhaps shortly after captured, and irrecoverably lost to their owners: yet though it might perplex the Christian moralist to show that the release was right and that the capture was right too, still he may rejoice that men conform, even in part, to the purity of virtue,

Attempts to deduce the maxims of international law as they now obtain, from principles of morality, will always be vain. Grotius seems as if he would countenance the attempt when he says, "Some writers have advanced a doctrine which can never be admitted, maintaining that the Law of Nations authorizes one power to commence hostilities against another, whose increasing greatness awakens her alarms. As a matter of expediency," says Grotius, "such a measure may be adopted; but the principles of justice can never be advanced in its favour."* Alas! if principles of justice are to decide what the Law of Nations shall authorize, it will be needful to

• Rights of War and Peace.

establish a new code to-morrow. A great part of the code arises out of the conduct of war; and the usual practices of war are so foreign to principles of justice and morality, that it is to no purpose to attempt to found the code upon them. Nevertheless, let those who refer to the Law of Nations, introduce morality by all possible means; and if they think they cannot appeal to it always, let them appeal to it where they can. If they cannot persuade themselves to avoid hostilities when some injury is committed by another nation, let them avoid them when "another nation's greatness merely awakens their alarms."

II. That the Law of Nations is wholly nugatory with respect to those states which are not parties to it, is a truth which, however sound, has been too little regarded in the conduct of civilized nations. The state whose subjects discover and take possession of an uninhabited island, is entitled by the Law of Nations quietly to possess it. And it ought quietly to possess it not that in the view of reason or of morality, the circumstance of an Englishman's first visiting the shores of a country, gives any very intelligible right to the King of England to possess it rather than any other prince, but that, such a rule having been agreed upon it, it ought to be observed; but by whom? By those who are parties to the agreement. For which reason, the discoverer possesses no sufficient claim to oppose his right to that of a people who were not parties to it. So that he who, upon pretence of discovery, should forcibly exclude from a large extent of territory a people who knew nothing of European politics, and who in the view of reason possessed an equal or a greater right, undoubtedly violates the obligations of morality. It may serve to dispel the obscurity in which habit and self-interest wrap our perceptions, to consider, that amongst the states which were nearest to the newly-discovered land, a law of nations might exist which required that such land should be equally divided amongst them. Whose law of nations ought to prevail? That of European states, or that of states in the Pacific or South Sea? How happens it that the Englishman possesses a sounder right to exclude all other nations, than surrounding nations possess to partition it amongst them?

Unhappily, our law of nations goes much further; and by a monstrous abuse of power, has acted upon the same doctrine with respect to inhabited countries; for when these have been discovered, the law of nations has talked, with perfect coolness, of setting up a standard, and thenceforth assigning the territory to the nation whose subjects set it up; as if the previous inhabitants possessed no other claim or right than the bears and wolves. It has been asked (and asked with great reason,) what we should say to a canoe-full of Indians who should discover England, and take possession of it in the name of their chief?

Civilized states appear to have acted upon the maxim, that no people possess political rights but those who are parties to the law of nations; and accordingly the history of European settlements has been, so far as the aborigines were concerned, too much a history of outrage, and treachery, and blood. Penn acted upon sounder principles: he perfectly well knew that neither an established practice, nor the Law of Nations, could impart a right to a country which was justly possessed by former inhabitants; and therefore, although Charles II. "granted" him Pennsylvania, he did not imagine that the gift of a man in London, could justify him in taking possession of a distant country without the occupiers' consent. What was 66 granted" therefore by his sovereign, he purchased of the owners; and the