generally permitted or generally forbidden.Where, therefore, the general permission of them would be pernicious, it becomes necessary to lay down and support the rule which generally forbids

them.

Thus to return once more to the case of the assassin. The assassin knocked the rich villain on the head, because he thought him better out of the way than in it. If you allow this excuse in the present instance, you must allow it to all who act in the same manner, and from the said motive; that is, you must allow every man to kill any one he meets, whom he thinks noxious or useless; which, in the event, would be to commit every man's life and safety to the spleen, fury, and fanaticism, of his neighbour;-a disposition of affairs which would soon fill the world with misery and confusion; and ere long put an end to human society, if not to the human species.

The necessity of general rules in human government is apparent; but whether the same necessity subsists in the Divine economy, in that distribution of rewards and punishments to which a moralist looks forward, may be doubted.

I answer, that general rules are necessary to every moral government: and by moral government I mean any dispensation, whose object is to influence the conduct of reasonable creatures.

Were such a rule admitted, for instance, in the case above produced; is there not reason to fear that people would be disappearing perpetually?

In the next place, I would wish them to be well satisfied about the points proposed in the following queries;

1. Whether the Scriptures do not teach us to expect that, at the general judgment of the world, the most secret actions will be brought to light?*

2. For what purpose can this be, but to make them the objects of reward and punishment.

3. Whether, being so brought to light, they will not fall under the operation of those equal and impartial rules, by which God will deal with his creatures?

They will then become examples, whatever they be now; and require the same treatment from the judge and governor of the moral world, as if they had been detected from the first.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Consideration of General Consequences pursued.

For if, of two actions perfectly similar, one be punished, and the other be rewarded or forgiven, THE general consequence of any action may be which is the consequence of rejecting general rules, the subjects of such a dispensation would estimated, by asking what would be the conseno longer know, either what to expect or how to quence, if the same sort of actions were generally act. Rewards and punishments would cease to permitted.-But suppose they were, and a thoube such, would become accidents. Like the sand such actions perpetrated under this permis stroke of a thunderbolt, or the discovery of a mine, sion; is it just to charge a single action with the like a blank or a benefit-ticket in a lottery, they collected guilt and mischief of the whole thousand? would occasion pain or pleasure when they hap-I answer, that the reason for prohibiting and pened; but, following in no known order, from any particular course of action, they could have no previous influence or effect upon the conduct. An attention to general rules, therefore, is included in the very idea of reward and punishment. Consequently, whatever reason there is to expect future reward and punishment at the hand of God, there is the same reason to believe, that he will proceed in the distribution of it by general rules.

Before we prosecute the consideration of general consequences any further, it may be proper to anticipate a reflection, which will be apt enough to suggest itself, in the progress of our argument.

punishing an action (and this reason may be called the guilt of the action, if you please) will always be in proportion to the whole mischief that would arise from the general impunity and toleration of actions of the same sort.

"Whatever is expedient is right." But then it must be expedient on the whole, at the long run, in all its effects collateral and remote, as well as in those which are immediate and direct; as it is obvious, that, in computing consequences, it makes no difference in what way or at what distance they ensue.

To impress this doctrine on the minds of young readers, and to teach them to extend their views beyond the immediate mischief of a crime, I shall here subjoin a string of instances, in which the particular consequence is comparatively insignificant; and where the malignity of the crime, and the severity with which human laws pursue it, is almost entirely founded upon the general consequence.

As the general consequence of an action, upon which so much of the guilt of a bad action depends, consists in the example; it should seem, that if the action be done with perfect secrecy, so The particular consequence of coining is, the as to furnish no bad example, that part of the guilt drops off. In the case of suicide, for instance, loss of a guinea, or of half a guinea, to the person if a man can so manage matters, as to take away who receives the counterfeit money: the general his own life, without being known or suspected consequence (by which I mean the consequence to have done so, he is not chargeable with any that would ensue, if the same practice were genemischief from the example; nor does his punish-rally permitted) is to abolish the use of money. ment secin necessary, in order to save the authority of any general rule.

In the first place, those who reason in this manner do not observe, that they are setting up a general rule, of all others the least to be endured; namely, that secrecy, whenever secrecy is practicable, will justify any action.

The particular consequence of forgery is, a damage of twenty or thirty pounds to the man

"In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ." Rom xi 16.-" Judge nothing before

the time, until the Lord come, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest

the counsels of the heart." 1 Cor. iv. 5.

who accepts the forged bill: the general conse- | must be inconsiderable; so also is the agent. If quence is, the stoppage of paper-currency.

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that is, it is "consistent with the will of God" that children should reverence their parents;-and the same of the rest.

CHAPTER X.

The Division of Rights.

RIGHTS, when applied to persons, are
Natural or adventitious:
Alienable or unalienable:
Perfect or imperfect.

I. Rights are natural or adventitious.
Natural rights are such as would belong to a
man, although there subsisted in the world no
civil government whatever.

Adventitious rights are such as would not. Natural rights are, a man's right to his life, limbs, and liberty; his right to the produce of his personal labour; to the use, in common with others, of air, light, water. If a thousand different persons, from a thousand different corners of the world, were cast together upon a desert island, they would from the Erst be every one entitled to these rights.

Adventitious rights are, the right of a king over his subjects; of a general over his soldiers; of a judge over the life and liberty of a prisoner; a right to elect or appoint magistrates, to impose taxes, decide disputes, direct the descent or disposition of property; a right, in a word, in any one man, or particular body of men, to make laws and regulations for the rest. For none of these rights would exist in the newly inhabited island.

The right of a prince over his people, of a husband over his wife, of a master over his servant, is generally and naturally unalienable.

The distinction depends upon the mode of acquiring the right. If the right originate from a contract, and be limited to the person, by the express terms of the contract, or by the common interpretation of such contracts (which is equivalent to an express stipulation,) or by a personal condition annexed to the right; then it is unalienable. In all other cases it is alienable.

The right to civil liberty is alienable; though in the vehemence of men's zeal for it, and the language of some political remonstrances, it has often been pronounced to be an unalienable right. The true reason why mankind hold in detestation the memory of those who have sold their liberty to a tyrant, is, that, together with their own, they sold commonly, or endangered, the liberty of others; which certainly they had no right to dispose of. III. Rights are perfect or imperfect. Perfect rights may be asserted by force, or, what in civil society comes into the place of private force, by course of law.

Imperfect rights may not.

Examples of perfect rights.-A man's right to his life, person, house; for, if these be attacked, he may repel the attack by instant violence, or punish the aggressor by law: a man's right to his estate, furniture, clothes, money, and to all ordinary articles of property; for, if they be injuriously taken from him, he may compel the author of the injury to make restitution or satisfaction.

Examples of imperfect rights.-In elections or And here it will be asked, how adventitious appointments to offices, where the qualifications rights are created; or, which is the same thing, are prescribed, the best qualified candidate has a how any new rights can accrue from the estab-right to success; yet, if he be rejected, he has no lishment of civil society; as rights of all kinds, we remedy. He can neither seize the office by force, remember, depend upon the will of God, and ci- nor obtain redress at law; his right therefore is vil society is but the ordinance and institution of imperfect. A poor neighbour has a right to reman? For the solution of this difficulty, we must lief; yet, if it be refused him, he must not extort return to our first principles. God wills the hap-it. A benefactor has a right to returns of grapiness of mankind; and the existence of civil so- titude from the person he has obliged; yet, if he ciety, as conducive to that happiness. Conse-meet with none, he must acquiesce. Children quently, many things, which are useful for the have a right to affection and education from their support of civil society in general, or for the con-parents; and parents, on their part, to duty and duct and conversation of particular societies al- reverence from their children; yet, if these rights ready established, are, for that reason, "consistent be on either side withholden, there is no compulwith the will of God," or "right," which, without sion by which they can be enforced. that reason, i. e. without the establishment of civil society, would not have been so.

From whence also it appears, that adventitious rights, though immediately derived from human appointment, are not, for that reason, less sacred than natural rights, nor the obligation to respect them less cogent. They both ultimately rely upon the same authority, the will of God. Such a man claims a right to a particular estate. He can show, it is true, nothing for his right, but a rule of the civil community to which he belongs; and this rule may be arbitrary, capricious, and absurd. Notwithstanding all this, there would be the same sin in dispossessing the man of his estate by craft or violence, as if it had been assigned to him, like the partition of the country amongst the twelve tribes, by the immediate designation and appointment of Heaven.

II. Rights are alienable or unalienable.
Which terms explain themselves.

The right we have to most of those things which we call property, as houses, lands, money, &c. is alienable.

It may be at first view difficult to apprehend how a person should have a right to a thing, and yet have no right to use the means necessary to obtain it. This difficulty, like most others in morality, is resolvable into the necessity of general rules. The reader recollects, that a person is said to have a "right" to a thing, when it is "consistent with the will of God" that he should possess it. So that the question is reduced to this: How it comes to pass that it should be consistent with the will of God that a person should possess a thing, and yet not be consistent with the same will that he should use force to obtain it? The answer is, that by reason of the indeterminateness either of the object, or of the circumstances of the right, the permission of force in this case would, in its consequence, lead to the permission of force in other cases, where there existed no right at all. The candidate above described has, no doubt, a right to success; but his right depends upon his qualifications, for instance, upon his comparative virtue, learning, &c. there must be some body therefore to compare them. The existence, degree, and respective im

portance, of these qualifications, are all indeter-
minate: there must be somebody therefore to deter-
mine them. To allow the candidate to demand suc-
cess by force, is to make him the judge of his own
qualifications. You cannot do this, but you must
make all other candidates the same; which would The insensible parts of the creation are inca-
open a door to demands without number, reason,pable of injury; and it is nugatory to inquire in-
or right. In like manner, a poor man has a right to the right, where the use can be attended with
to relief from the rich; but the mode, season, and no injury. But it may be worth observing, for
quantum of that relief, who shall contribute to it, the sake of an inference which will appear below,
or how much, are not ascertained. Yet these points that, as God had created us with a want and de-
must be ascertained, before a claim to relief can be sire of food, and provided things suited by their
prosecuted by force. For, to allow the poor to ascer- nature to sustain and satisfy us, we may fairly pre-
tain them for themselves, would be to expose pro- sume, that he intended we should apply these
perty to so many of these claims, that it would lose things to that purpose.
its value, or rather its nature, that is, cease indeed
to be property. The same observation holds of all
other cases of imperfect rights; not to mention, that
in the instances of gratitude, affection, reverence,
and the like, force is excluded by the very idea of the
duty, which must be voluntary, or cannot exist at all.
Wherever the right is imperfect, the correspond-
ing obligation is so too. I am obliged to prefer
the best candidate, to relieve the poor, be grateful
to my benefactors, take care of my children, and
reverence my parents; but in all these cases, my
obligation, like their right, is imperfect.

the original stock, as I may say, which they have
since distributed among themselves.
These are,

1. A right to the fruits or vegetable produce of the earth.

2. A right to the flesh of animals.

This is a very different claim from the former. Some excuse seems necessary for the pain and loss which we occasion to brutes, by restraining them of their liberty, mutilating their bodies, and, at last, putting an end to their lives (which we suppose to be the whole of their existence,) for our pleasure or conveniency.

The reasons alleged in vindication of this practice, are the following: that the several species of brutes being created to prey upon one another, affords a kind of analogy to prove that the human species were intended to feed upon them; that, if let alone, they would over-run the earth, and exclude mankind from the occupation of it; that they are requited for what they suffer at our hands, by our care and protection.

Upon which reasons I would observe, that the analogy contended for is extremely lame; since brutes have no power to support life by any other means, and since we have; for the whole human species might subsist entirely upon fruit, pulse, herbs, and roots, as many tribes of Hindoos actually do.

I call these obligations "imperfect" in conformity to the established language of writers upon the subject. The term, however, seems ill chosen on this account, that it leads many to imagine, that there is less guilt in the violation of an imperfect obligation, than of a perfect one: which is a groundless notion. For an obligation being perfect or imperfect, determines only whether violence may or may not be employed to enforce it; and determines nothing else. The degree of guilt incurred by violating the obligation, is a different thing, and is determined by circumstances altoThe two other reasons may be valid gether independent of this distinction. A man reasons, as far as they go; for, no doubt, if man who, by a partial, prejudiced, or corrupt vote, dis-had been supported entirely by vegetable food, a appoints a worthy candidate of a station in life, great part of those animals which die to furnish upon which his hopes, possibly, or livelihood, de- his table, would never have lived: but they by no pended, and who thereby grievously discourages means justify our right over the lives of brutes merit and emulation in others, commits, I am per- to the extent in which we exercise it. What suaded, a much greater crime, than if he filched danger is there, for instance, of fish interfering a book out of a library, or picked a pocket of a with us, in the occupation of their element? or handkerchief; though in the one case he violates what do we contribute to their support or preseronly an imperfect right, in the other a perfect one. vation? As positive precepts are often indeterminate in their extent, and as the indeterminateness of an obligation is that which makes it imperfect; it comes to pass, that positive precepts commonly produce an imperfect obligation.

Negative precepts or prohibitions, being generally precise, constitute accordingly perfect obligations.

The fifth commandment is positive, and the duty which results from it is imperfect.

The sixth commandment is negative, and imposes a perfect obligation.

Religion and virtue find their principal exercise among the imperfect obligations; the laws of civil society taking pretty good care of the rest.

CHAPTER XI.

The General Rights of Mankind. By the General rights of Mankind, I mean the rights which belong to the species collectively;

It seems to me, that it would be difficult to defend this right by any arguments which the light and order of nature afford; and that we are beholden for it to the permission recorded in Scripture, Gen. ix. 1, 2, 3: "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth: and the fear of you, and the dread of you, shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered; every moving thing shall be meat for you; even as the green herb, have I given you all things." To Adam and his posterity had been granted, at the creation, "every green herb for meat," and nothing more. In the last clause of the passage now produced, the old grant is recited, and extended to the flesh of animals; even as the green herb, have I given you all things." But this was not till after the flood; the inhabitants of the antediluvian world had therefore no such permission, that we know of Whether they actually refrained from the flesh

of animals, is another question. Abel, we read, was a keeper of sheep; and for what purpose he kept them, except for food, is difficult to say, (unless it were sacrifices :) might not, however, some of the stricter sects among the antediluvians be scrupulous as to this point? and might not Noah and his family be of this description? for it is not probable that God would publish a permission, to authorise a practice, which had never been 'disputed.

Wanton, and, what is worse, studied cruelty to brutes, is certainly wrong, as coming within one of these reasons.

Supreme Proprietor. So far all is right: but you cannot claim the whole tree, or the whole flock, and exclude me from any share of them, and plead this general intention for what you do. The plea will not serve you; you must show something more. You must show, by probable arguments at least, that it is God's intention, that these things should be parcelled out to individuals; and that the established distribution, under which you claim, should be upholden. Show me this, and I am satisfied.

But until this be shown, the general intention, which has been made appear, and which is all that does appear, must prevail; and, under that, my title is as good as yours. Now there is no argument to induce such a presumption, but one; that the thing cannot be enjoyed at all, or enjoyed with the same, or with nearly the same advantage, while it continues in common, as when ap

the thing is in its nature capable of being enjoyed by as many as will, it seems an arbitrary usurpation upon the rights of mankind, to confine the use of it to any.

From reason then, or revelation, or from both together, it appears to be God Almighty's intention, that the productions of the earth, should be applied to the sustentation of human life. Consequently all waste and misapplication of these pro-propriated. This is true, where there is not ductions, is contrary to the Divine intention and enough for all, or where the article in question will; and therefore wrong, for the same reason requires care or labour in the production or prethat any other crime is so. Such as, what is re-servation: but where no such reason obtains, and lated of William the Conqueror, the converting of twenty manors into a forest for hunting; or, which is not much better, suffering them to continue in that state; or the letting of large tracts of land lie barren, because the owner cannot cultivate them, nor will part with them to those who can; or destroying, or suffering to perish, great part of an article of human provision, in order to enhance the price of the remainder, (which is said to have been, till lately, the case with fish caught upon the English coast;) or diminishing the breed of animals, by a wanton, or improvident, consumption of the young, as of the spawn of shell-fish, or the fry of salmon, by the use of unlawful nets, or at improper seasons: to this head may also be referred, what is the same evil in a smaller way, If there be fisheries, which are inexhaustible, the expending of human food on superfluous dogs as the cod-fishery upon the Banks of Newfoundor horses; and, lastly, the reducing of the quanti-land, and the herring-fishery in the British seas, ty, in order to alter the quality, and to alter it generally for the worse; as the distillation of spirits from bread-corn, the boiling down of solid meat for sauces, essences, &c.

If a medicinal spring were discovered in a piece of ground which was private property, copious enough for every purpose to which it could be applied, I would award a compensation to the owner of the field, and a liberal profit to the author of the discovery, especially if he had bestowed pains or expense upon the search; but I question whether any human laws would be justified, or would justify the owner, in prohibiting mankind from the use of the water, or setting such a price upon it as would almost amount to a prohibition.

are said to be; then all those conventions, by which one or two nations claim to themselves, and guaranty to each other, the exclusive enjoyment of these fisheries, are so many encroachments upon the general rights of mankind.

This seems to be the lesson which our Saviour, after his manner, inculcates, when he bids his Upon the same principle may be determined a disciples "gather up the fragments that nothing question, which makes a great figure in books of be lost." And it opens indeed a new field of natural law, utrum mare sit liberum ? that is, as I duty. Schemes of wealth or profit, prompt the ac- understand it, whether the exclusive right of navitive part of mankind to cast about, how they may gating particular seas, or a control over the navigaconvert their property to the most advantage; and tion of these seas, can be claimed, consistently their own advantage, and that of the public, com-with the law of nature, by any nation? What is monly concur. But it has not as yet entered into the minds of mankind to reflect that it is a duty, to add what we can to the common stock of provision, by extracting out of our estates the most they will yield; or that it is any sin to neglect this.

From the same intention of God Almighty, we also deduce another conclusion, namely "that nothing ought to be made exclusive property, which can be conveniently enjoyed in common.'

It is the general intention of God Almighty, that the produce of the earth be applied to the use of man. This appears from the constitution of nature; or, if you will, from his express declaration; and this is all that appears at first. Under this general donation, one man has the same right as another. You pluck an apple from a tree, or take a lamb from a flock, for your immediate use and nourishment, and I do the same; and we both plead for what we do, the general intention of the

necessary for each nation's safety, we allow as their own bays, creeks, and harbours, the sea contiguous to, that is within cannon shot, or three leagues of their coast; and upon this principle of safety (if upon any principle,) must be defended the claim of the Venetian State to the Adriatic, of Denmark to the Baltic Sea, and of Great Britain, to the seas which invest the island. But, when Spain asserts a right to the Pacific Ocean, or Portugal to the Indian Seas, or when any nation extends its pretensions much beyond the limits of its own territories, they erect a claim which interferes with the benevolent designs of Providence, and which no human authority can justify.

3. Another right, which may be called a general right, as it is incidental to every man who is in a situation to claim it, is the right of extreme necessity; by which is meant, a right to use or destroy another's property when it is necessary for