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tells us whereabout it lies; or we shall otherwise be liable to wander in some quite opposite direction.

Illustrations from our recent history will show very conclusively, we think, how important it is that considerations of abstract expediency should be joined with those of concrete expediency-how immense would be the evils avoided and the benefits gained, if à posteriori morality were enlightened by à priori morality. Take first the case of free trade. Until recently it has been the practice of all nations in all times, artificially to restrict their commerce with other nations. Throughout past centuries this course may have been defensible as conducing to safety. Without saying that lawgivers had the motive of promoting industrial independence, it may yet be said that in ages when national quarrels were perpetual, it would not have been well for any people to be much dependent on others for necessary commodities. But though there is this ground for asserting that commercial restric tions were once expedient, it cannot be asserted that our corn-laws were thus justified: it cannot be alleged that the penalties and prohibitions which, until lately, hampered our trade, were needful to prevent us from being industrially disabled by a war. Protection in all its forms was established and maintained for other reasons of expediency; and the reasons for which it was opposed and finally abolished were also those of expediency. Calculations of immediate and remote consequences were set, forth by the antagonist parties; and the mode of decis ion was by a balancing of these various anticipated con sequences.

And what, after generations of mischievous legislation and long years of arduous struggle, was the conclusion arrived at, and since justified by the results? Exactly the one which abstract equity plainly teaches. The moral course proves to be the politic course. That ability to

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exercise the faculties, the total denial of which causes death-that liberty to pursue the objects of desire, without which there cannot be complete life-that freedom of action which his nature prompts every individual to claim, and on which equity puts no limit save the like freedom of action of other individuals, involves, among other corollaries, freedom of exchange. Government which, in protecting citizens from murder, robbery, assault, or other aggression, shows us that it has the all-essential function of securing to each this free exercise of faculties within the assigned limits, is called on, in the due discharge of its function, to maintain this freedom of exchange; and cannot abrogate it without reversing its function, and becoming aggressor instead of protector. Thus, absolute morality would all along have shown in what direction legislation should tend. Qualified only by the consideration that in turbulent times they must not be so carried out as to endanger national life, through suspensions in the supply of necessaries, these à priori principles would have guided statesmen, as fast as circumstances allowed, towards the normal condition. We should have been Eved from thousands of needless .estrictions. Such restrictions as were needful would have been abolished as

soon as was safe. An enormous amount of suffering would have been prevented. That prosperity which we now enjoy would have commenced much sooner. And our present condition would have been one of far greater power, wealth, happiness, and morality.

Our railway-politics furnish another instance. A vast loss of national capital has been incurred, and great misery has been inflicted, in consequence of the neglect of a sim ple principle clearly dictated by abstract justice. Whoso enters into a contract, though he is bound to do that which the contract specifies, is not bound to do some other thing which is neither specified nor implied in the con

tract. We do not appeal to moral perception only il warranty of this position. It is one deducible from that first principle of equity which, as above pointed out, follows from the laws of life, individual and social; and it is one which the accumulated experience of mankind has so uniformly justified, that is has become a tacitly-recog nized doctrine of civil law among all nations. In cases of dispute respecting agreements, the question brought to trial always is, whether the terms of the agreement bind one or other of the contracting parties to do this or that; and it is assumed as a matter of course, that neither of them can be called upon to do more than is expressed or understood in the agreement.

Now, this almost self-evident principle has been wholly ignored in railway-legislation. A shareholder, uniting with others to make and work a line from one specified place to another specified place, binds himself to pay certain sums in furtherance of the project; and, by implication, agrees to yield to the majority of his fellow-shareholders on all questions raised respecting the execution of this project. But he commits himself no further than this. He is not required to obey the majority concerning things not named in the deed of incorporation. Though with respect to the specified railway he has bound himself, he has not bound himself with respect to any unspecified railway which his co-proprietors may wish to make: and he cannot be committed to such unspecified railway by a vote of the majority. But this distinction has been wholly passed over. Shareholders in joint-stock undertakings, have been perpetually involved in various other undertakings subsequently decided on by their fellow-shareholders; and against their will have had their properties heavily mortaged for the execution of projects that were ruinously unremunerative. In every case the proprietary contract for making a particular railway, has been dealt

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with as though it were a proprietary contract for making railways! Not only have directors thus misinterpreted it, and not only have shareholders foolishly allowed it to be thus misinterpreted; but legislators have so little un derstood their duties, as to have constantly endorsed the misinterpretation. To this simple cause has been owing most of our railway-companies' disasters. Abnormal facilities for getting capital have caused reckless competition in extension-making and branch-making, and the projection of needless opposition lines, got up to be purchased by the companies they threatened. Had each new scheme been executed by an independent body of shareholders, without any guarantee from another company-without any capital raised by preference-shares, there would have been little or none of the ruinous expenditure we have seen. Something like a hundred millions of money would have been saved, and thousands of families preserved from misery, had the proprietary-contract been enforced according to the dictates of pure equity.

We think these cases go far to justify our position. The general reasons we gave for thinking that the ethics of immediate experience must be enlightened by abstract ethics, to ensure correct guidance, are strongly enforced by these instances of the gigantic errors that are made when abstract ethics are ignored. The complex esti. mates of relative expediency, cannot do without the clue furnished by the simple deductions of absolute exrediency.

We propose to study the treatment of criminals from this point of view. And first, let us set down those temporary requirements which have hitherto prevented, and do still, in part, prevent the establishment of a perfectly just system.

The same average popular character which necessitates

a rigorous form of government, necessitates also a rigor ous criminal code. Institutions are ultimately determined by the natures of the citizens living under them; and when these citizens are too impulsive or selfish for free institutions, and unscrupulous enough to supply the requisite staff of agents for maintaining tyrannical institutions, they are proved by implication to be citizens who will both tolerate, and will probably need, severe forms of punishment. The same mental defect underlies both results. The char acter which originates and sustains political liberty, is a character swayed by remote considerations-a character not at the mercy of immediate temptations, but one which contemplates the consequences likely to arise in future. We have only to remember that, among ourselves, a political encroachment is resisted, not because of any direct evil it inflicts, but because of the evils likely hereaf ter to flow from it, to see how the maintenance of freedom presupposes the habit of weighing distant results, and being chiefly guided by them.

Conversely, it is manifest that men who dwell only in the present, the special, the concrete-who do not realize with clearness the contingencies of the future-will put little value on those rights of citizenship which profit them nothing, save as a means of warding off unspecified evils. that can possibly affect them only at a distant time in an obscure way. Well, is it not obvious that the forms of mind thus contrasted, will require different kinds of punishment for misconduct? To restrain the second, there must be penalties that are severe, prompt, and specific enough to be vividly conceived; while the first may be deterred by penalties that are less definite, less intense, less immediate. For the more civilized, dread of a long, monotonous, criminal discipline may suffice; but for the less civilized there must be inflictions of bodily pain and death. Thus we hold, not only that a social condition which gen

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