Imatges de pàgina
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By further information, I heard of some very wise laws, condemning a shepherd to the galleys for nine years, for giving a little foreign salt to sheep. A neighbour of mine has been ruined by an indictment for cutting down two oaks in his own wood, not observing a formality which he had not been able to know any thing of. His wife died of grief, in extreme distress, and his son lives, if it may be so called, very wretchedly. I own that these laws are just, though the execution of them is a little hard; but I cannot bear with those laws which authorise a hundred thousand men to go, under the pretence of loyalty, and massacre as many peaceable neighbours. The generality of mankind appear to be naturally endued with sense enough to make laws; but then it is not every one who has virtue sufficient to enact good laws.

Call together from all the parts of the earth, the husbandmen, (a simple, quiet class,) they will at once agree that the surplus of one's corn should be allowed to be sold to our neighbours, and that a law to the contrary is both absurd and inhuman; that coin, as representing provisions, should be no more adulterated than the products of the earth; that a father of a family should be master within his own walls; that religion should promote friendship and benevolence among men living in society, and not make them fanatics and persecutors; that the labouring and busy class should not be deprived of the fruits of their industry, to bestow them on superstition and sloth. This plain assembly would in an hour make thirty such laws, all beneficial to mankind.

But should Tamerlane come and subdue India, you will see nothing but arbitrary laws. One shall squeeze a province to enrich a publican of Tamerlane's; another shall make it hightreason, only for having dropped a free word concerning the mistress of the rajah's first valet de chambre; a third shall take away from the farmer half his harvest, and dispute the remainder with him; and what is worse than all this, there will be laws by which a Tartar messenger shall come, and take away your children in the cradle, making them soldiers, or eunuchs, according to their constitutions, and leave the father and mother to wipe away each other's tears.

Query, is it better to be Tamerlane's dog or his subject? doubtless his dog has much the best of it.

CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL LAWS.

THE following minutes were found among the papers of an eminent lawyer, and perhaps deserve some consideration:

No ecclesiastical law should ever be in force till it has formally received the express sanction of the government: by this it was, that Athens and Rome never had any religious quarrels.

Those quarrels appertain only to barbarous nations.

To permit or prohibit working on holydays, should only be in the magistrate's power: it is not the fit concern of priests to hinder men from cultivating their grounds.

Every thing relating to marriages should depend solely on the magistrate; and let the priests be limited to the august function of the solemnization.

Lending at interest, to be entirely within the cognizance of the civil law, as by it commercial affairs are regulated.

All ecclesiastics whatever should, as the state's subjects, in all cases be under the controul and animadversion of the government.

Away with that disgraceful absurdity, of paying to a foreign priest the first year's produce of an estate given to a priest of our own country.

No priest should have it in his power to deprive a member of society of the least privilege, on pretence of his sins; for a priest being himself a sinner, is to pray for sinners: he has no business to try and condemn them.

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Magistrates, farmers, and priests, are alike to contribute to expences of the state, as alike belonging to the state. One weight, one measure, one custom.

The punishments of criminals should be of use: when a man is hanged he is good for nothing; whereas a man condemned to the public works, still benefits his country, and is a living admonition.

Every law should be clear, uniform, and precise; explanations are, for the most part, corruptions.

The only infamy should be vice.

Taxes to be proportionate.

A law should never clash with custom; for if the custom be good, the law must be faulty.

LIBERTY;

OR,

A Dialogue between a PHILOSOPHER and his FRIEND.

Phil. A BATTERY of cannon is playing close by your ears; are you at liberty to hear, or not to hear it?

Friend. Unquestionably I cannot but hear it.

Phil. Would you have those cannon carry off your head, and your wife's and daughter's, who are walking with you? Friend. What a question is that! In my sober senses, it is impossible that I should will any such thing: it cannot be.

Phil. Well; you necessarily hear the explosion of those cannon, and you necessarily are against being, with your family, cut off by a cannon-shot as you are taking the air; you have not the power not to hear, nor the power of willing to remain there.

Friend. Nothing more evident.

Phil. Accordingly, you have come thirty paces to be out of the cannons' way: thus you have had the power of walking that little space with me.

Friend. That again is clear.

Phil. And if you had been paralytic, you could not have avoided being exposed to this battery: you would not have had the power of being where you are; you would, necessasarily, not only have heard the explosion, but have received a cannon-shot; and thus you would necessarily have been killed.

Friend. Very true.

Phil. In what then consists your liberty? if not in the power which your body has made use of to do, what your volition, by an absolute necessity, required.

Friend. You put me to a stand. but the power of doing what I will?

Liberty then is nothing

Phil. Think of it, and see whether liberty can have any other meaning.

Friend. At this rate, my greyhound is as free as I am: he has necessarily a will to run at the sight of a hare, and likewise the power of running, if not lame: so that in nothing am I superior to my dog. This is levelling me with the beasts. Phil. Such are the wretched sophisms of those who have tutored you. Wretched thing indeed, to be in the same state of liberty as your dog! And are not you like your dog in a

thousand things? In hunger, thirst, waking, sleeping: and your five senses, are they not common to him? Are you for smelling otherwise than through the nose? Why then are you for having liberty in a manner different from him?

Friend. But I have a soul continually reasoning, which my dog knows little of. Simple ideas are very near all his portion; whereas I have a thousand metaphysical ideas.

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Phil. Well you are a thousand times more free than he ; that is, you have a thousand times more power of thinking than he still you are not free in a manner different from him. Friend. How! am I not at liberty to will what I will? Phil. Your meaning?

Friend. I mean what all the world means: is it not a common saying, Will is free?

Phil. A proverb is no reason: please to explain yourself more clearly.

Friend. I mean, that I have the liberty of willing as I please.

Phil. By your leave, there is no sense in that. Do you not perceive that it is ridiculous to say, I will will; you will necessarily, in consequence of the ideas occurring to you. Would you marry, yes or no?

Friend. What, were I to say, I neither will the one nor the other?

Phil. That would be answering like him who said, some think cardinal Mazarine dead, others believe him to be still living, but I believe neither the one nor the other!

Friend. Well, I have a mind to marry. Phil. Good: that is something of an answer. have you a mind to marry?

And why

Friend. Because I am in love with a young lady, who is handsome, of a sweet temper, well bred, with a tolerable fortune, sings charmingly, and her parents are perhaps of good credit. Besides, I flatter myself that my addresses are very acceptable, both to herself and to her family.

Phil. Why, there is a reason. You see you cannot will without a reason, and I declare you have the liberty of marrying; that is, you have the power of signing the contract.

Friend. How! not will without a reason! What then becomes of another proverb, "sit pro ratione voluntas ?”—my will is my reason. I will because I will.

Phil. My dear friend, under favour, that is an absurdity; there would then be in you an effect without a cause.

Friend. What! when I am playing at even and odd, is there a reason for my choosing even, rather than odd?

Phil. Yes, to be sure.

Friend. Pray let me hear that reason.

Phil. Because the idea of odd presented itself to your mind before the contrary notion. It would be strange, indeed, that in some cases you will because there is a cause of volition; and that in other cases you will without any cause. In your willing to be married, you evidently perceive the determining reason; and in playing at even and odd, you do not perceive it; and yet one there must be.

Friend. But again, am I not then free?

Phil. Your will is not free, but your actions are: you are free to act, when you have the power of acting.

Friend. But all the books I have read on the liberty of indifference

Phil. Are nonsense. There is no such thing as liberty of indifference it is a word void of sense, and coined by those who were not overloaded with it.

LIMITS OF THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.

Poor doctor! these limits are every where. Art thou for knowing how it came to pass, that thy arm and thy leg obey thy will, and thy liver does not? Wouldst thou investigate how thought is formed in thy minute understanding, and the child in that woman's womb? I give thee what time thou wilt. Tell me also, what is matter? Thy equals have written ten thousand volumes on this article: some qualities of this substance they have found, and children know them as well as thyself; but what is that substance essentially? and what is that to which thou hast given the appellation of spirit, from a Latin word signifying breath, in the room of a better, because thou hast no idea of it?

And

See this grain of corn, which I throw into the ground, and tell me how it rises again to shoot forth a stem with an ear? Inform me how the same ground produces an apple on this tree, and a chesnut on that? I could fill a folio with such questions, to which thy answer ought to be, I know not. yet thou hast taken thy degrees, and wearest a furred gown and cap, and art called master: and there is another fool, who, priding himself upon a petty employment in some paltry town, conceits that he has likewise purchased the privilege of judging and condemning what he does not understand.

Montaigne's motto was, "What do I know ?”—Que sai-je? and thine is, "What do I not know ?"—Que ne sai-je pas ?

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