injury: and so on, ad infinitum. This is another case, along with others occurring through this work, falling under the second remark subjoined to the axioms in p. 203. It is almost needless to observe that the specific pain which arises from the sense of injury, can only be felt by a moral being.

The distinction between the pain of injury, and the pain in the infliction of which the injury itself consists, has by no means been sufficiently observed; and, in consequence, some inquirers, fixing their view on the former, to the exclusion of the latter, (in the same way as they have looked at the excellence and desirableness of virtue, without perceiving the mode in which virtue comes, in any case, to exist,) have been led to object to the justest accounts of the ultimate sources of our moral notions.

It is to be observed that the consideration of the pain of injury has no place, where obligations contend, till after the comparative weight of the contending obligations has been fixed. If I have made an unlawful promise, and then refuse to keep it, the party affected cannot properly be said to be injured, though he suffers the pain of disappointment by my refusal to fulfil the promise ; because the refusal being, on the whole, obligatory on me, he has not, on the whole, the right to have the promise kept, and cannot suffer the peculiar pain of injury, which arises from the sense of a right's being violated.

Strictly analogous to the pain of injury, is what may be called the pain of injustice: by which I mean the painful feeling with which we are affected in regard to one who obtains an advantage or enjoyment at the expense of suffering or deprivation to ourselves: and this even when the act which causes the injustice, may be that of a third party.

It has already appeared, that our ideas of moral fitness require, not merely that we should be happy rather than miserable, but that we should not be less happy, or more miserable, than are others of equal desert. It seems to us in an especial degree unfit that we should be positively miserable, while others, of less, or not of greater desert, are positively happy. But the painful sense of unfitness is exasperated to the highest possible degree, when the inequality is produced by actual transference-when the enjoyment of another is caused by our suffering, or, (which are but cases of this,) when we suffer a punishment due to another, or another obtains a reward due to us. In cases like these last, we cannot but look upon the one who profits at our expense, as being, in effect, even though not in act, the cause or occasion of our suffering. And though the painful sentiment we experience in regard to the person who thus obtains an unjust advantage over us, differs entirely from resentment, (indeed it is not properly a feeling towards him, but a feeling in regard to the relative situation of him and ourselves, considered as an effect) it is one of exquisite pain. Resentment, as arising from the sense of injury, can exist only towards the agency by which the injustice is effected.

It is evident that, in regard to the circumstantial and derived effects of actions, the same truth applies that was formerly stated in regard to the proper effects: namely, that in whatever degree unfit effects of any or all the kinds called circumstantial or derived, (which from their nature must usually be unfit,) attend the omission or commission of an action, it is obligatory so far not to omit or commit that action.

And in general, and under all possible circumstances, the rule must hold good, that in proportion as any effect is, in its own nature, fit to be produced, there exists a reason for the performance of the action by which it may be produced; and vice versa with regard to unfit effects. Even if we should suppose other grounds of obligation, they could never negative this one, or exclude it from having its proper influence.

We may now remark the precise point at which, in the formation of a specific moral proposition, necessary truth, as visible a priori, ends; and opinion, as derived from observation and experience, begins.

Such proposition is the conclusion of a syllo

gism; of which the major is a necessary truth, the minor generally an opinion.*

That an action which produces fit effects is so far obligatory, is a truth that rests on the same foundation as any of Euclid's axioms. That this or that sort of action will actually produce fit effects, may be either certainly true, or certainly false, but not necessarily either.

We may observe that practical moralists generally adopt a different mode of classification, when enumerating what it is our duty to do, and what it is our duty to avoid. When enumerating duties, they specify duties to parents, to children, to neighbours, &c. When enumerating crimes, they do not specify them thus, crimes against parents, against children, &c., but crimes against the person, against the property, against the mind. The reason of this is because positive duties are, comparatively speaking, obligatory only in regard to particular persons; the obligation not to commit crimes is general: consequently, in the one case, we look to the object of the action; in the other, to the nature of it.

270

CHAPTER IV.

THEORY OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.

THE question to be investigated regarding civil government is, - how any individual or number of individuals in a community have a right forcibly to control the actions of each of the remaining members of that community: the persons controlled not being inferior, it may be superior, to those who exercise the control, in wisdom and virtue, and even, (setting aside the interference of third parties,) in physical strength:-or how there exists, on any member of a community, a moral obligation, (independently of compulsion,) to submit to such control; often against his own judgment and inclination, and where, in denying such submission, he might yet be violating no positive right otherwise existing?

That certain members of a community ought, or have a right, to control the remaining members,

that the latter ought to submit to the control of the former, -are, in form and matter, moral rules or precepts, propositions expressive of duty. To