sions of private persons are invaded for injuries received from the state. I know that in national transactions all the members of a community are looked upon as constituting one person, and in this light you take revenge upon the person that injured you: but this is only an imaginary personality, very useful for pointing out the measures of national justice, but by no means supporting it as a foundation. If the French king has fortified Dunkirk, or encroached upon our colonies in America, in breach of treaties, you cannot charge the merchant trading from Martinico with any faithlessness or badness of heart upon that account: so justice stands here separated from delinquency and every spice of evil intention; for you esteem it lawful to seize his effects by way of reprisal. But why do you judge it lawful? because you cannot right yourself otherwise so necessity makes the justice; for were it possible to come at the governors directly without touching the subjects, no righteous man would think the latter method justifiable, notwithstanding any supposed identity of person between them.

8. Were the justness of actions essential and inherent, whenever the rules of justice clash, as we find they sometimes do, that which must be superseded must abate something from the justness of the other: for the case is so in matters of profit or pleasure. If you lay out a sum of money to make an improvement of greater value upon your estate, you are certainly a gainer: yet could you procure the same improvement free of charges your gain would be greater. If you might partake of some very agreeable diversions by going five miles through very dirty roads, it is worth your while; yet could you have it without that trouble I suppose you would like it better. But suppose two men in different parts of a field near a river, alarmed by the cry of some person drowning, one has a path to run along, but the other cannot go to help without trampling down his neighbor's corn, which you must allow to be an unjust action considered in itself, nevertheless I conceive the strictest casuist would acknowledge the merit of both equal: so the lesser rule bears no intrinsic value to be subtracted from the greater, for the expedience of abstaining from another's property is taken off by the higher importance of saving a man's life.

9. Nor do the obligations of truth and fidelity rest upon any other basis than expedience: it is easy to see that were truth banished the world, there could be no intercourse among mankind, no use of speech: if you asked anybody's direction upon the road, you might as well let it alone, for you could gather nothing from their answer if there were no truth in men. Were all falsehood wrong as such, why are poems and novels suffered?

why do moralists invent fables wherein they introduce beasts talking, gods appearing in the air, and the moon desiring to be taken measure of for a suit of clothes? But when fiction may serve some good purpose and does no hurt, the wisest do not scruple to employ it. Did the bare form of an agreement create an obligation to perform it, no circumstance whatever could render it invalid. Are then all those suitors unrighteous who apply to our courts of equity to be relieved from their contracts? or are the courts iniquitous in decreeing them relief? But were there no faith among men, no regard to their engagements, anybody may see, with half an eye, what stagnation of business, what mutual diffidence and confusion must ensue; and it is the avoidance of those evils that gives them their sanction: therefore, when the rigid observance of compacts manifestly tends to greater mischiefs than could be avoided thereby, no righteous judge, having authority so to do, will scruple setting them aside. Nevertheless, this does not justify a man in breaking his engagements whenever he finds it detrimental or inconvenient to keep them, for our views are so narrow that we cannot always see all the consequences of our actions, and rules are the marks hung out to direct us to an advantage we cannot discern: therefore the wise man will adhere inviolably to his rules though he cannot discover their expedience; for he will look upon the manifest injustice of a thing as a stronger evidence of its being detrimental than any appearance that may arise to the contrary; yet an expedience there must be, or the rules will not be right. For justice is the minister of reason, though it ought to be the master of action; and it is one thing to establish rules of conduct, but another to show the foundation of them. When a man is to act, he ought to consult his ideas of justice, and follow whithersoever they direct, without reserve or looking to anything further; but when we inquire why justice is recommendable, it behoves us to trace out the reference it bears to happiness; for without this it will be hard to prove the obligation to it; and this being once clearly evinced, it would want nothing else to give it all the influence that could be desired.

This method seems to have been attempted by the old philosophers, but they stopped short in the midway, as we may learn from Cicero, who was no philosopher himself, but an elegant reporter of the Greek philosophy, where he endeavors to show the prudence of Regulus' conduct in LIB. III. CAP. 27, 8, 9, of his offices; for he tells us those are to be rejected who would sepa-, rate utility from justice; because, says he, whatever is just or honestum is therefore useful. This is giving the ladies' reason, It is

so because it is; for he does not vouchsafe a word to prove why it is useful. That everything just is really advantageous I shall not deny, nor that the practice of justice is the surest road to happiness, but I must deny that this is a first principle or self-evident proposition, or to be discerned without much thought and consideration; for I know that in many cases the contrary appears upon first sight therefore it had become a philosopher, especially such a powerful artificer of words as Cicero, to have laid open the fallacy of this appearance and shown the intermediate steps by which justice leads to utility. He might have had an ample field to expatiate upon in the benefits and necessity of justice to the welfare of mankind. He might have showed that the Roman commonwealth rose to that pitch of grandeur they shone in by a strict fidelity to their engagements, and that they afterwards began to decline and fall into confusion by their oppression of the provinces taken under their protection, and their selfish endeavors to encroach upon one another's rights. He might then have gone on to prove the good of every individual contained in that of the public, and thence concluded that Regulus, all things considered, acted more for his own advantage in submitting to the torments he underwent than he could have done by any breach of faith whatsoever. As for his rhodomontade that the brave man looks upon pain as a mere trifle, this overthrows his other assertion, because it seems to admit that if pain were an evil it might justify the breach of engagements: and indeed we, who take it for such, commonly do admit it as an excuse when in a degree we conceive intolerable. When a sum of money is sent for a particular purpose, justice certainly requires it should be disposed of according to the owner's direction. Suppose then the party carrying it attacked on the way by ruffians, who threaten him with some grievous mischiefs unless he will deliver it them: if he be perfectly honest, and at the same time possessed of the stoical fortitude so as not to value pain at a straw, he will bear the worst they can do to him rather than betray his trust: but suppose the messenger were a weak and fearful woman, to whom violent ill usage were really terrible, I believe none of us would think it the least abatement of her character for honesty if she yielded to her terSo that justice is not so necessarily connected with use, but that a greater evil on the other side may separate them, and in that case the action ceases to be just: wherefore utility constitutes the essence of justice, but not justice that of utility.

rors.

10. But though justice be not utility, nevertheless it ought to be esteemed the certain mark and evidence of utility, and an intimate persuasion of its being so, will fasten desire upon it as upon an

ultimate point of view, without needing anything beyond to recommend it. Whoever has this desire so strong as to counterpoise all other desires, possesses the cardinal virtue here treated of; and whoever has not this desire at all, cannot be called an honest man in any degree, though he may do honestly for fear of punishment or prospect of advantage. Therefore if a righteous man be asked why he fulfils his engagements, though to his own manifest detriment, he will answer, because it would have been unjust to have failed in them; for he wants no other motive to induce him; and if the querist be righteous too he will want no other reason to satisfy him. But if he be asked further, why he esteems justice a proper motive of action, and he be a person who does not take his principles upon trust from the example or authority of others, but has used to examine them himself, he will refer to the general necessity and expedience of justice, and allege that what conduces to the general good of mankind must be good for every particular. But could it be made to appear that injustice in some single instance tended to the general advantage, he would not think himself warranted to practise it, because the mischief of setting a bad example, and weakening the authority of a beneficial rule, would be greater than any present advantage that might accrue from the breach of it. And even supposing his injustice could be concealed from all the world, so that it could do no hurt by example, still he would not believe it allowable, for fear it should have a bad influence upon his own mind. For whoever understands human nature, knows how dangerous it is to lessen the force of those restraints that withhold us from the exorbitances of self-interest: if we break into them in some instances where we might do it innocently, we shall run a great hazard of losing their influence at other times when it will be absolutely necessary for keeping us within bounds. Nor can we doubt of there being an utility in justice, when we find it acknowledged in some measure, by the unanimous consent of all mankind: it is a vulgar saying, that Honesty is the best policy; nor perhaps is there a man who, if he could accomplish his desires justly, would not choose it that way rather than by wrong. The very gangs of highwaymen and street robbers observe some fidelity, though little enough it is true, in their engagements with one another so that even those persons who take their notions of utility and pleasure for their sole guidance, still pay some regard to justice, being led by their experience of its conducing necessarily thereto.

11. The just man, to deserve that appellation, must be so throughout, in small matters as well as great: he will regard natural justice, and legal too, when it is not superseded by the other :

he will abstain from injuring, not only the persons, possessions, and liberties of his neighbors, but likewise their good name, reputation, and claim to the merit of their performances, neither d ceiving by flattery, blackening by calumny, overbearing by haughtiness, nor overreaching by cunning: he will beware of wronging anybody, even in his own private estimation, nor give credit hastily to unfavorable reports, but judge of persons and interpret actions candidly and cautiously: he will look uport all untruth or bias to the prejudice of another as a species of injustice, and will esteem ingratitude one of the most flagrant.

12. As justice consists in a hearty desire of doing right to every one against the solicitations of other desires urging another way, and as among contending impulses the most vigorous will always prevail, therefore justice, though distinct from temperance and fortitude, cannot well subsist without them, because it is their office to reduce our other desires within a manageable compass. Ambition, covetousness, extravagant fondness for pleasure, anger, and all kinds of intemperance, hurry men on, otherwise well disposed, to unwarrantable actions. Fretfulness, sloth, over delicacy, effeminate softness, and every other branch of impatience, will not suffer them to do justly, where any pains or difficulty are requisite. These vices lay them under a necessity of transgressing: but though we have seen before that a real necessity takes away injustice from a deed, yet an unnecessary necessity, if I may be allowed the expression, that is, one brought upon us by our own folly, leaves it in full colors. Therefore, the ancients were right when they said that whoever possessed one virtue completely, must possess them all, because they mutually nourish and protect one another.

CHAP. XXXIV.

BENEVOLENCE.

THE grand impediment against making philosophy universally understood, arises from the particular style unavoidably employed therein, different from that used upon common occasions. Sometimes it is found necessary to frame technical terms unknown to the man of plain sense: at other times, when words of general currency will serve, yet a peculiar idiom and structure is necessary to make them answer the purpose effectually. This is nowhere more apparent than in speaking of the virtues, which are vulgarly