they are immoral and unjust. Besides a freedom from restraint and bias, a knowledge of truth alfo is necessary to enable us to be just. Truth therefore should at all times and under all circumstances be spoken; and secrecy, prudential reserve, delicate concealment &c. should have no place in the world. The mo ral as well, as physical order of things being equally governed by necessity, virtue can be approved only on the same principle, that we approve a fertile vale; and vice disapproved, as we dis approve an infectious distemper; as the cause of good, and the cause of evil. Rewards and punishments must be regarded only as a mean, and that an irrational one, of reforming error, which can be effectually cured only by the infusion of truth; and resentment, remorse, and affliction for past events, must be extinguished from the face of the earth. In fine, the truly wise and just man will be actuated neither by interest nor ambition, the love of honor, the desire of fame, nor emulation; the good of the whole will be his only object; this good he will incessantly pursue, and the pursuit of it will constitute his happiness; ‘a happiness, which nothing but bodily pain, and scarcely that, can disturb.*

Nothing can be more thoroughly consistent. Allow the first position, and all the inferences follow so clearly and irresistibly, that it seems impossible to elude their force, however subversive they may be of the principles, which have hitherto governed the conduct of mankind.

If we are bound in Justice to do all the good in our power, to produce the greatest sum of happiness in sentient nature, which it is within the compass of our faculties to effect, then doubtless, Justice being altogether an inflexible duty, admitting no dispensation, no remission, no, not for a moment, our whole mind must be solely directed to this single purpose; and the desire to effect it must constitute the only legitimate motive of human action. Then whatever leads us to act upon any other incitement, or with any other view, must be extirpated or subdued, as revolting against the rules of Justice. Then every passion and emotion of the human heart must be extinguished, as abhorent to our duty;

* See Pol. Jus. 4to Edit. passim; and particularly b. 2, c. 2, &, 6 ; b. 3. c. 3. b. 4. c. 4, 5, 6; b. 6. c. 5 ; b. 7, & b. 8,

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it being in the essence of all affections of this kind to prompt us to act upon particular motives, sometimes not apparently condu cive to the general good, and never certainly grounded upon it. Then patriotism, friendship, gratitude, affection, pity, all the public and private virtues, all the social and domestic charities, which have hitherto been considered the best blessings and surest hope, as well, as the grace and ornament of our nature, must be effectually rooted from our feelings, as creating an unjust preference in favor of certain individuals, independently of their disposition and their power to co-operate with us in promoting the general good. Then whatever obstructs us in the pursuit of this good is an abateable nuisance. All determinate rules are blind restrictions. All legal property is inveterate injustice. I have a right to just as much, as I conceive will best enable me to accomplish 'my grand project; and nobody has a right to any other portion, upon any other title. All law is usurpation upon reason; all judicial process, fetters and oppression; prevailing sentiments and manners, antiquated prejudice. If we accept the principle, we must take the consequences; they are potentially included.

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It is to this rigid dependence, that we must asscribe the total want of any thing like a decisive refutation, or even masterly review of a System, which has certainly excited some curiosity. Those, who have engaged in this task, though otherwise fully equal to it, have not given themselves patience to unravel the web, in which they were entangled. They were embarrassed. From positions too obvious for examination they had been grad ually led on to conclusions, at which human reason revolts. pelled from the extremities, they slowly measured back their steps to the original principle. All was sound, all was water-tight; not a cranny, not a chink for truth to slip out, or error to creep in; till, in despair of tracing the leak, they injudiciously endeavored at a compromise. They approved the System in part, they condemned it in part. The root was sound, the branches vigorous, the foliage fair, but the fruit was the apple of Sodom. "Bitter ashes; which th' offending taste, "With spattering noise, rejected."

That System will not be so treated. Without chewing these cinders, nothing can be clearer, than, that the whole scheme is of a

piece, one and indivisible; and that, as one and indivisible, it must be admitted or rejected. If the fundamental principle be true, if it be true, that morality consists in producing all the good we can, I admit, that all the consequences are clear, concatenated, and of irresistible conviction. Arachne never wove a juster web. If the fundamental principle be false, the whole is false; and the farther we advance the more we are bewildered.

On what ground is it so confidently assumed and implicitly admitted, that we are bound, as moral agents, to act on the prin ciple of producing all the good in our power?

What gives force to this principle, and, through this principle, as I conceive, to the whole body of the New System of Morals, is the opinion, which has lately prevailed, that virtue consists altogether in utility; that it is the beneficial or pernicious tendency of any action, which alone constitutes it virtuous or vicious. If virtue be indeed only another name for the utility of an action, I am bound to look to utility, and to utility only, as a test of meral rectitude; and, setting aside every other consideration, to act, as I mean to be virtuous, on the sole principle of producing all the good in my power. I cannot refuse myself to this conse

quence.

I have stated this notion of virtue, though now so familiar, as of late introduction. It certainly is so. The cause of moral distinction, as a curious and important phenomenon, has of course at all times exercised the enquiries of the reflecting part of mankind. Till within the present century, I am pretty confident, it has never been ascribed to this prospective view of its tendency. Of the ancient moralists I certainly do not recollect one, who has accounted for it in this way. The object of these teachers indeed was not morality merely, in the confined sense, in which we use the term, but the art of living happily. As conducive to a virtuous life however, the doctrine of morals could not be well neglected; and it was accordingly inculcated by all, from Epicurus, who regarded it as auxiliary to what he perversely called pleasure, to Zeno, who exalted it into the supreme and ultimate good itself. The occasion was certainly fair for resolving virtue into utility; yet so far were they from regarding it in thatlight, that, amongst the various topics, which they urged, and with such di

versified address, to interest the human heart in its favor, its ultimate subservience to the general advantage is but faintly to be recognized. If we descend to the later moralists, who have indulged much more freely in speculations, than their predecessors, the beneficial tendency of virtue was by no means the first of its properties, which engrossed attention. Its agreement with the law of nature, its congeniality to the perceptions of a moral taste, its conformity to certain eternal and immutable relations and differences of things, its correspondence with truth, were characteristics real or imaginary, which had previously been suggested and adopted.

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Utility, though not the first quality of virtue, which engrossed attention, seems however, when once fairly brought forward, to have been of all others the best adapted to interest and secure it. It was a property of virtue not to be disputed. It gave, or seemed to give a very clear and precise account of a distinction, previously obscure; and furnished an argument in its favor, which, if not the most powerful in its recommendation, was at least the most unanswerable in its defence. Perhaps too the fashion, which prevailed so remarkably early in this century, of tracing the goodness of the Creator to his creatures through all the works of nature, by predisposing the mind to regard with eagerness the subservience of any principle to the grand design, so conspicuously carrying on in the system around us, might still farther conspire to recommend it. At any rate, it was no sooner started, than confessed, that virtue consists in that modification of thought and action, which tends to promote the general happiness, and vice in its opposite.

Hume proposed this System in his Moral Essays, with his usual address. Virtue he resolved into personal merit ; and personal merit, according to Mr. Hume, consists solely in the pos session of mental qualities, useful or agreeable to ourselves or others. Nothing he observes can furnish just ground for moral distinction in any quality or action, but its beneficial or pernicious tendency. Reason informs us, what these tendencies are ; sentiment of humanity implanted in our nature, a fellow feeling for the happiness or misery of mankind, produces our moral ap

This was written in 1798,

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probation or our blame, as any quality or action has the one tendency or the other.

No hypothesis was ever more successful. It prevailed without a struggle; and was pursued to precisely the same consequences by the illuminated philosophers of France and the most orthodox divines of England; men as little disposed to agree in any speculations as can well be imagined. The train of thought was probably the same in the minds of both these parties. If it be the tendency of any action to good or ill, which constitutes it vir tuous or vicious, then this tendency is the springhead, so long concealed, of moral truth, and the universal solvent, to which we must resort in all moral enquiry. By this tendency we must determine the existence and the measure of virtue and vice, of right and wrong. On this tendency we must found the moral approbation and the blame, we attach to these qualities. From this tendency we must deduce the sole obligations, we are under to observe them.

The same conclusion was formed by the atheistic philosophers and the Christian divines, but of course it was differently applied. By the former it was employed to explode the received distinctions of right and wrong, as the offspring of prejudice and error, and to construct an improved code of morals on the simple principle of utility. By the latter it was adopted to give a rational account of these distinctions, and to impress a juster sense of their importance. The works of Helvetius will afford an able specimen of the first of these designs; and I shall just advert to Mr. Brown and Mr. Paley, the first as the original mover, and the latter as the very popular expounder of the other.

[To be continued.]