if these two terms, or others synonymous, expressed all the distinctions about which our moral pow ers are conversant. But I have never met with more than one instance, in which the reality of these distinctions has been fairly called in question. The doctrine which has lately been maintained on this head is so extraordinary in itself, and has been urged by authority so powerful, that it requires the fullest consideration. The late Dr. Thomas Brown, in the system of ethics which forms a part of his university lectures, lays it down as a fundamental point to be carefully held in view throughout the whole enquiry, that "an action in morals, is nothing but the agent acting." He accordingly insists upon an entire rejection of the common distinction between the goodness of the agent and that of the act: asserting that it is impossible for an agent to be good, an action bad, or vice versa. "When we speak of an action," he observes, as virtuous, without regard to the merit of the particular agent, we only conceive some other agent acting in different circumstances, and exciting in us, consequently, a different feeling of approbation, by the difference of the frame of mind which we suppose ourselves to contemplate;" - which is to say, if I rightly understand Dr. Brown's meaning, that when a man, intending to do evil, actually does good- if we call the man bad, the action good, we merely mean that another agent who should perform the same action, intending it to produce good, would be a good agent. Well; but does it not remain true, even in this way of stating the matter, that there is one sort of effect, which if an agent intends to produce, he will be a good agent; another sort of effect which if an agent intends to produce, he will be a bad agent? These different sorts of effects then must have different names; the one must be called a good, the other a bad effect; or they must be distinguished in some other way. Now the action, strictly so called, is just as distinct from the intention of the agent, as it is from the effect produced; and in the manner in which it stands related to each, may as justly be characterized from the nature of the one, as from that of the other. If, compassionating the distress and terror of a prisoner, I set him at liberty, the action is merely the motion of my hand which turns the key of his dungeon, or looses his chain. That action, taken by itself, is no more capable of having a moral character applied to it than the twirling of my watch chain, or the flapping of my handkerchief. But as, on the one hand, the action supposed is performed with a certain intention, so, on the other, the performance is attended with a certain effect; and surely Dr. Brown would have allowed that the effect may be good while the intention is bad, or vice versa. Thus, in the case supposed, my intention of relieving the prisoner is good; the effect of letting him escape from punishment and setting him loose to do more mischief - is bad. Now whether or not the action (which, as I have said, stands between the intention and the effect - being equally distinct from, and equally related to each - but which must take all its moral character from the one or from the other) - whether or not the action, when spoken of as morally good or bad, is to be spoken of only in conjunction with the intention - (for this is all that can be meant by saying that an action in morals is only the agent acting) - is a dispute relating entirely to a verbal matter. The substantial point is this - is an effect, or an effect and the action producing it, - abstractedly from any intention of the agent - capable of being the subject of a moral determination? Is any effect what ought to be, any other effect what ought not to be? are we morally pleased or satisfied with one effect, and the action producing it - morally displeased or dissatisfied with another effect, and the action producing it irrespectively of any intention on the part of an agent? This point I refer to Dr. Brown himself. "When we speak," says he, "of an action as virtuous, we speak of it as separated from all those accidental intermixtures of circumstances which may cloud the discrimination of an individual; when we speak of a person as virtuous, we speak of him as acting perhaps under the influence of such accidental circumstances: and though his action, considered as an action which might have been performed by any man under the influence of other circumstances, may excite our moral disapprobation in a very high degree, our disapprobation is not extended to him. The emotion which he excites is pity, not any modification of dislike. We wish he had been better informed; and when his general conduct has impressed us favourably, we feel perfect confidence that in the present instance also, if he had been better informed, he would have acted otherwise." Now what, I would ask, can be meant by speaking of the " discrimination of an individual" as "clouded," by " pitying" him, or by "wishing that he had been better informed:" what is the use, in short, of all the practical rules of morality, if " an action in morals is only the agent acting ?" If an action, merely flowing from good intentions, is right in all the senses in which an action can be right, and if it is impossible for what is done to be wrong, if what is intended be right; surely an agent who intends well, cannot be mistaken in his consciousness of the nature of his intention; and if he cannot be mistaken in this particular, he cannot, according to Dr. Brown, be mistaken in any thing at all affecting the moral character of the action: why then pity him, or wish he had been better informed? Even on the author's own showing, then, there is something more that we desire in an action, than merely the good intentions of the agent. If we must not, according to Dr. Brown, denominate this the goodness of the action, we must just have some other name for it : and this, so far as I am able to gather, is the total result that flows from the establishment of Dr. Brown's favourite position, that "an action in morals is only the agent acting." Indeed we may lay our account with finding that, whenever an author sets himself to contradict a sentiment that is universally understood and assented to, such as this, that a man with good intentions may commit a wrong action, he involves us in a mere question of words. If a man were, by fraud or violence, to maintain possession of a property which ought to belong to another, it would, I apprehend, be a very intelligible and convenient method of stating the nature of such a case, to say, "the one is proprietor in point of right, the other in point of fact." Now suppose any one were to tell us that this is quite a superfluous and imaginary distinction, tending to nothing else but to perplex and obscure our notions of property; that there is really no such thing as being a proprietor in fact only; that the proprietor is, and only can be, he who has the right of possession; and that when we speak of any one as being proprietor in fact, as opposed |