are property, that is to say, which are objects, that, in these particular circumstances of society, could not be violated without a feeling of self-reproach in the invader-is all which, ethically, we have to consider. That such a feeling does arise in the breast of him who invades, what, in the general circumstances of society, is regarded as property, even the sophist who would found so much on the varying circumstances, in which it arises, does not dispute; and it is this feeling, in whatever circumstances, and in whatever manner it may have arisen, from which the duty flows. Whether the object be of a kind, which even in the fabled state of nature, we should have felt it right to respect, as the property of him who had won and occupied it, with his own unwearied labour, or of a kind which we respect as property, because we respect that social good which arises from the laws that have declared it to be property-it is not wonderful that our feeling of respect for it, should seem, in these two cases, to be the same; since the respect is only that feeling of moral duty, the object of which, that is always some form of good to others, is in both cases truly the same.

Justice, then, I repeat, and the distinction is one which is of great importance, is not what constitutes property-it is that virtue, which presupposes property, and respects it, however constituted. It may vary, therefore, with all the ordinances of different social states-but it is still the same virtue, if it respect what, in those different states, is legally assigned to individuals; and, as the same virtue, in all these cases, directed to the same object of abstaining from what is previously affirmed or recognized as property, it does not vary, in the variations of human policy, that may assign to individuals in one state, what, from different views of general good, would not be assigned to them in a different state, but which still, in every case, points out to justice what is to be understood as the property, which that unvarying virtue does not fail to respect.

To point out to you the advantages which flow from the general observance of this duty, that leads us to abstain from the property of others, however much it might seem capable of contributing to our own gratification, would surely be a superfluous labour. Indeed, in picturing to you the advantages which flow from the very inequality of property itself, I have already exhibited to you, the benefit of the principle which respects property, and of the duty which consists in our conformity to this principle, a duty, without which, indeed, the mere acknowledgment of the various things possessed, as things of which the possession ought not to be violated, would be of no avail. The general feelings of mankind, with respect to the importance of this duty, are indeed sufficiently shown, in the laws which they have established for punishing the breach of it. Even under our

own excellent legal system, in which death is appointed to him, who premeditates and executes the death of another, it is appointed also to him, who has assailed the property only, not the person; and politically and morally erroneous, as this equal allotment of punishment, to offences so unequal, most truly is,—it still marks sufficiently the general feeling of the evil, which would arise to society from the frequent violation of this simple duty, that such an allotment of punishment should still continue, in such a nation, and in such an age.

When we consider the multitude who are in possession of means of enjoyment, that are to them the means only of selfish avarice or of profligate waste,-in both cases, perhaps, productive rather of evil than of good to the individual possessor,and when, at the same time, we consider the multitudes, far more numerous, to whom a small share of that cumbrous and seemingly unprofitable wealth, would in an instant, diffuse a comfort, that would make the heart of the indigent gay in his miserable hovel, and be like a beam of health itself to that pale cheek, which is slowly wasting, on its wretched bed of straw, in cold and darkness, and a famine that is scarcely felt, only because appetite itself is quenched by disease,—it might almost seem to the inconsiderate, at least for a moment, in contemplating such a scene, that no expression of the social voice could be so beneficial, as that which should merely say, let there be no restraint of property, but let all the means of provision for the wants of mankind, be distributed according to the more or less imperious necessity of those wants, which all partake. It requires only the consideration of a moment however, to perceive, that the very distribution would, itself, be the most injurious boon that could be offered to indigence,-that soon, under such a system of supposed freedom from the usurpations of the wealthy,-instead of the wealth which supports, and the industry which is supported, the bounty which relieves, and the penury that is relieved,there would only be one general penury, without the possibility of relief; and an industry that would be exercised, not in plundering the wealthy, for there could not then be wealth to admit of plunder, but in snatching from the weaker some scanty morsel of a wretched aliment, that would scarcely be sufficient to repay the labour of the struggle, to him who was too powerful not to prevail. The vices that would tyrannize uncontrolled, in such an iron age, I do not attempt to picture. I speak only of the mere physical wants of man, and of the means, which different states of society afford, for the gratification of those wants, according as possession is more or less secured, though no other original difference were supposed, than of the simple right of property. There would be no palaces, indeed, in such a system of equal rapine, and this might be considered as but a slight evil, from

the small number of those who were stripped of them; but when the chambers of state had disappeared, where would be the cottage, or rather the whole hamlet of cottages, that might be expected to occupy its place? The simple dwellings of a happy peasantry might be the last, indeed, to be invaded; but when the magnificent mansion had been stripped by the first band of plunderers, these too, would soon find plunderers as rapacious. No elegant art could be exercised,-no science cultivated,-where the search of a precarious subsistence for the day, would afford us no leisure for studies or exercises, beyond the supply of mere animal wants; and man, who, with property, is what we now behold him, and is to be, in his glorious progress even on earth, a being far nobler than we are capable, in our present circumstances, of divining,-would, without property, soon become, in the lowest depth of brutal ignorance and wretchedness, what it is almost as difficult for our imagination to picture to us, as it would be for it to picture what he may become on earth, after the many long ages of progressive improvement. Such is the state to which we should be reduced, if all men were to do what the robber individually does. He contributes whatever a single heart and a single arm can contribute, to make of the social and hap py world around us, that unsocial and miserable world, which we vainly labour to conceive. His crime is not perpetrated against an individual only, but against the very union that binds society together; and the abhorrence with which his crime is considered, is not the mere wrath that is felt by the aggrieved individual,-it is the sympathizing resentment of all mankind.

LECTURE LXXXIV.

ON OUR NEGATIVE DUTIES TO OTHERS—ABSTAINING FROM ROBBING THEM OF THE AFFECTIONS OF OTHERS-ON ABSTAINING FROM INJURING THE CHARACTERS OF OTHERS-ON VERACITY.

GENTLEMEN, in treating of the general duties which we owe to all mankind, I considered these, in my last Lecture, as of two classes, negative and positive-the one set leading us to abstain from injuring others, the other set leading us to be actively useful to them.

An individual, it is evident, may be injured by us, in various ways, with which, of course, in the obligation to abstain from the different forms of injury, there is a co-extensive variety of duty. He may be injured directly in his person,-in his property,-in those affections of others, which are almost a species of property, in his character,-in his knowledge or belief,-in his virtue, in his tranquillity.

Of these various modes of injury we have considered two. I proceed then, now, to the third in order, the injury which we may do to any one, by robbing him of the affections of those, whose love may, perhaps, be to him, the most precious of his possessions.

Affection, I have said, may be considered almost as a form of wealth possessed;-and the most delightful affection which can be given to us, is truly, if I may apply the cold terms of merchandise to the pure commerce of the heart, a species of property, for which the price of similar affection has been paid, and to which the laws of wedlock have given a legal and holy title. It is to the robbery of conjugal affection, therefore, as the most important, that I shall confine the few remarks which I have to offer on this species of injury.

If the guilt of the robber were to be estimated, in proportion to the quantity of evil, which he knowingly produces, where is it, that our most indignant hatred of the crime should be fixed? Not surely on him, whom alone we are accustomed to denominate a robber. The wretch, who perishes on the scaffold for his sordid thefts, unpitied, perhaps, by a single individual in the whole crowd of gazers, that mark the last faint convulsion of his

1

ON ABSTAINING FROM ROBBING INDIVIDUALS, ETC. 263

limbs, only to wonder when the quiverings are to cease,-may deserve the horrors of that ignominious punishment under which he sinks. But does he truly rank in villany with the robber of another class, with him, who would be astonished, perhaps, to have a place assigned to him among common pilferers,-but who is in guilt the basest of them all, however noble he may be, in titles, and splendid with all that pomp, which can be alike the covering of vice and of virtue? There may pass, in some stately carriage, while the crowd are still gazing on the body that hangs lifeless before them, some criminal, of far deeper iniquity, whose eye too may turn, where all other eyes are fixed, and who may wonder at the increase of crimes, and moralize on their causes, and rejoice at their punishment,-while the carriage in which he reclines, and moralizes at his case, is bearing him to the house of his friend, by a secret appointment with her who is the mistress of it,-whom months of incessant falsehoods and treacheries were unable to subdue, but whom, by the influence of some finer simulation, he is at last to carry off, as a noble booty, from the virtue and happiness to which she never is to return.

The common thief, who steals or forces his way into the house at midnight, has never been treated with kindness and confidence, by him whose property he invades; and all which he carries off may, usually, be repaired, without very much difficulty, or may, perhaps, be of a kind which is scarcely of sufficient importance to our convenience, to be replaced by the easy efforts that might replace it. But what is to repair the plunder of him, whose robbery is of that description which exists only within the heart, who steals not the object of regard only, but the very capacity of feeling affection and confidence again,-and who, by a single crime, converts, in the eyes of the sufferer, that world of social harmony, which God has made so beautiful, into a world of deceivers and the deceived! of pleasures, that are but illusion, and of misery that is reality!

Let us imagine one of those domestic groups which form, to the lover of happiness, one of the loveliest spectacles with which the earth is embellished-a family, in the small circle of which, there is no need of distracting and noisy gaieties without, because there are constant tranquillity and enjoyment within,-in which the pleasure of loving is, in the bosom of the wedded pair, a delight, that, as blending in one uniform emotion with the pleasure of being loved, is scarcely to be distinguished from that affection which is ever flowing around it,-a delight that grows not weaker, but more intense, by diffusion to the little frolickers around, who, as yet, know little more than the affection which they feel, and the affection of which they are the objects,--but