to be happy, and is much less likely to do good to others, than a rich man suddenly made poor. There is no change in the condition of human life, except the change from freedom to slavery or imprisonment,-no deprivation of rank, honours, dignity, political power, military power, or sovereign dominion,—which blights so many prospects, which chills so many hopes, which brings such bitter disappointments, and such painful humiliations, which offers such violence to a man's familiar habits and thoughts, and forces him into courses for which he is so little fitted, as the change from affluence to beggary. The interruption of this right takes a man from a station where he is contented, and which he is fitted to fill, to put him in a station where he will be discontented and dangerous, and which he is not fitted to fill. The effect on the person who is supposed to be benefited by his loss, need not be considered; as, at times when this right is interrupted, the resistance is usually so great, that although the plundered are impo

It is to this that Juvenal probably refers, when he so feelingly says, that

"Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se

Quam quod ridiculos homines facit."

Men are not ridiculous simply by being poor; it is when they become poor, that the shifts and expedients to which they are driven, in order to conceal their poverty and keep up a semblance of their former wealth, too frequently make them ridiculous.

verished, the plunderers are seldom enriched. It is for these, among many other reasons, that the right of property is one of those vested rights which should be most sparingly and tenderly interfered with by a wise legislature; but, like all other rights, it is the mere creature of the sovereign power, which can at any moment destroy what it created and to deny the power of the legislature to dispose of it at pleasure, is to confound expediency and justice with fact, and to conclude that what ought not to be done, cannot be done.

Wrongful and rightful are the adjectives of wrong and right the substantives; and differ from wrong and right the adjectives, inasmuch as the former signify that which agrees or disagrees with the rule of law, the latter that which agrees or disagrees with the rule of morality.

Justice is commonly used by political writers in the sense of moral justice. In this sense alone it is applicable to acts of the legislature. Sometimes, however, it is used as identical with law, as when we speak of the administration of justice, of courts of justice, &c.*

* "The legal criminal intention necessary in criminal law is not identical in strictness with the evil intention imputable in morals. It is enough, that there exists an intention to do the It is not necessary that the party should know that the act is morally wrong. It makes no difference even if the

act.

party believe that the act is morally virtuous.

A

case like that of Martin the incendiary will illustrate the distinctions. There could be no pretence for his acquittal, supposing the jury of opinion that he believed that it was morally or religiously right to burn York Minster, but knew, at the same time, that it was legally wrong. If they meant by their verdict to express that his understanding was too disturbed to be capable of knowing that it was legally wrong, the acquittal was correct."-Edinburgh Review, No. 107, p. 221, 222. There could be no doubt that Martin was aware that the burning of York Minster was a criminal act, as his contrivances for escaping observation in committing the deed evinced considerable forethought; and the same remark applies to nearly all cases of crimes committed by madmen. If madmen were acquitted only when proved to be ignorant of the law, they would be acquitted, not on the ground of their madness, but on quite a different plea, of which others, besides madmen, might avail themselves. The true state of the question seems rather to be, whether, when a man's mind is so diseased that he believes himself to be driven by an overwhelming duty, whether moral or religious, to the commission of an act which he knows to be illegal, he is to be considered as a person whose punishment can be useful to society, and whom society can hold as responsible for his acts. A merely depraved man may think murder or robbery indifferent acts; he may deny the existence of right and wrong, or of all moral rules whatever but if he commits murder or robbery, he is properly amenable to punishment. But a madman is not indifferent to a moral duty; he is hurried on to a violation of law by the suggestions of a deranged understanding and a heated imagination, which seem to him far to outweigh all other considerations. A man in this state of mind is no more an accountable political agent, and a fit subject for the animadversion of the law, than he is an accountable moral agent, and a subject for moral disapprobation: as a moral agent, his errors can only be pitied; as a political agent, he must only be prevented from doing further mischief.

IV.

LAW.-LAWFUL.-UNLAWFUL.

A FULL investigation of the different meanings of the word law would of itself furnish matter for a long treatise; but as it is a subject which belongs properly to the province of jurisprudence, and could not be satisfactorily explained without diverging into questions unconnected with political science, I shall limit myself to one remark on an ambiguity which has a very extensive influence on political reasoning.

Law properly signifies a general command of the sovereign, whether conveyed by the way of direct legislation, as in the case of statutes, or of permissive legislation, as in the case of legal rules established by courts of justice. The only proper mode of determining a dispute as to the existence or construction of a law, is by application to a competent tribunal, which alone has authority to decide it.

Law, however, is often used to denote, not the commands of a sovereign, but certain moral rules, the existence of which can only be determined by the arguments of private individuals, and not by the authority of public

officers. It is in this sense that we speak of the law of God, the law of nature, the laws of honour, &c.

The same confusion of legal and moral rules is likewise transferred to the adjectives derived from this term: for, as Archbishop Whately has observed, The words lawful and unlawful are sometimes employed with reference to the law of the land, and sometimes to the law of God and the dictates of a sound conscience: so that the same thing may be lawful in one sense, which is unlawful in another."*