composed, the nice adjustment of complicated claims, the punishment of evil-doers, and the praise of them that do well, although the latter is scarcely to be met by adequate provisions of the civil magistrate. In all these cases, it is based on the one principle of seeking the common weal: in the former, or relative institution, it is stated of Abraham, that the Lord knew him, "that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment: and in the latter, whatever may be the form of civil government, it should have but one object, the happiness and the virtue of the people, so that it might be always said of the executive, "When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me; because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness and it clothed me: my I was judgment was as a robe and a diadem. eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor; and the cause which I knew not, I searched out. And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth." Job xxix. 11-17. Thus, its simplicity, utility, and necessity, are the principal recommendations of relative and political justice and its exercise will be required on every day, for

every day will produce some new act of violence and injustice.

There are they, who fancy that justice may be left to individual feeling, or to the opinions of private bodies, or to the decision of larger sections of society, or to the judgment of mankind in general; and who vainly think the parade of executive government altogether unnecessary, since they plead for their virtue, as if it existed already in the bosom of man, as defined by common sense, directed by moral principle, and governed by conscience, not intending by this term reason enlightened by revelation, and sanctioned by religion, but a kind of half judgment of right and wrong, according to some fancied standard of accommodating purity. But the grand source of error in all this reasoning, consists in a forgetfulness of the real state of man, and in assuming the untenable position, that he is perfectly innocent; that even here, happiness is within his own reach; that his bosom is not agitated by conflicting passions; that he has no tendency to evil; that wisdom and piety, sincerity and truth, benevolence and compassion alone actuate him; that he is free from the influence of temptation; that he has clean escaped from the power of ignorance and vice, duplicity and falsehood, envy and selfconceit; and that his heart is governed by motives the most disinterested; thus assuming an imaginary state of perfection for man, and avowing a practical disbelief of the scriptural account of his

really lost and ruined condition: and when once the casuist has lost sight of this, the great compass of his thoughts, he has abandoned the only guide of his ratiocination, and is lost in unsatisfactory conjecture. The simple, but melancholy truth is, that man cannot confide in his fellowman; that he is taught by experience to be suspicious of his motives and conduct; and that the apparatus of justice is interposed as a barrier to his vicious and anti-social conduct, under the influence of selfish passions, exhibited in the form of despotic power on the one hand, where a sufficient quantity can be accumulated in the hands of one, or of a few individuals; or of licentious freedom on the other, where the lawless will of the many is placed in the room of that single unlimited sway, which has been just noticed. The natural tendency of both these forms of power, is towards injustice, towards a sacrifice of the interests of many, and especially of the feeble, for the gratification of the few, and particularly for the aggrandiezment of the strong. But justice interposes; and since it is perfectly equal in its decisions, it admits of no claims of pre-eminence of the great over the little all is equal, and the views and feelings of the highest personage, demand, or at least obtain, no greater attention, than those of the peasant. Memorable instances of the truth of this position, are to be found in our own code of laws, and in the mode of their upright and independent administration.

In spite of the perversion of human opinion,

and feeling, and judgment, some traces will yet be found in man, descriptive of his high original, some feeble glimmerings, which still faintly indicate what he once was, and what he might have been. So in the present instance, a sense of justice may be found inherent in the human mind, although so lamentably distorted and obscured; aye, even its vestiges are to be marked in the retributive visitations of savage life, which though influenced by passion, and stimulated by the love of revenge, do yet proceed upon the assumption of appeasing the angry spirits of their relatives and friends, by visiting the injustice done to others, through the medium of calamities of an equally, or more fearful nature. So again, with regard to the power of conscience, which though defined by the amount of moral principle in action, and by the influence of religious motive, does yet always to a certain extent, approve the just, and condemn the unjust. But though there may be a foundation for this virtue, it is confessedly feeble, and becomes the immediate object of education to develop, to strengthen, to inform, to enforce, and practically to apply; and this is to be accomplished by moral and religious instruction.

The principles of justice and morality are alike; and moral duty is uniform in its character; since it flows from one source only, viz. the revelation of the will of God which he has vouchsafed to man. Thus justice is founded on immutable truth; and it is implanted in the human heart in the form of

an authentic communication from the Most High God to his feeble erring creatures; it is the offspring of infinite mind, is applied by infinite wisdom, and leads to infinite good. Thus it is perfectly independent of the varying opinions of man, and of all the nicer distinctions of philosophical morality; it is the judgment of God, not the caprice or prejudice of man; it is the law of heaven, and not simply the institutions of reason; it is not the result of opinion, since it rests in religion, in that counterpart of infinite mind,, which existed anterior to the formation of all possible opinion; it is the indestructible attribute of Jehovah, and is to be found in man only as it may have been vouchsafed to him: although frequently clothed in language, it is altogether independent of words; it requires no logical support, and cannot be enforced by argument, for it is the science of duty, and consists in a prompt feeling of right, and in obedient action, not in reasoning and discussion, speculation and hypothesis. Justice is to the social compact what medicine is to the body; it should remove every uneasiness, repress every excessive action, stimulate every languid function, restore and preserve the balance of the several organs of which the body is composed, sustain its wasting energies, husband its resources, and secure, as far as possible, all the highest perfection of healthy action. So the object of justice is to cure and to correct the disorders to which the will of man is prone; to obviate the effects of injury, to repress vice, to

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