JB/015/197/001

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53

Hence a universal rule may be deduced – that
The more enlightened the body of a nation is, the stronger the
influence of the moral sanction. the weaker that of the religions.

The case of the Romans is no exception: Virtue it is said characterized
the infancy of that State. Depravity the decline. Yet was it more enlightened
at the latter of those periods than at the former.

1. To this it may be answered in the first place that the body of the
people could never be said to have been enlightened to the even at the last. Literature
was copious but not diffused. Works were many but copies of them were
few.

2. In the next place the depravity which strikes so much in the
history of the declension latter ages of that State was not the depravity of private life
but of a few public men corrupted by the abuse and evil adjustment ill settlement of the
Political Sanction. The influence of the moral sanction is not painted in
the mutilated and imperfect portraits of the times that are handed down to us.

3. There are examples enough handed down to us to show that the little
virtue there was in the early ages of that State was more owing to the influence
of the political sanction than the moral. The Political Sanction was so
disposed as to produce a certain portion of public virtue at the when very time that
Private Virtue was at as low an ebb as can be conceived. Witness the
poisoning mentioned by Livy. From that same account it appears that
private depravity was not taken did not become an object of notice till it had arisen to such a height
as to shake the very existence of the State. MS Ethics Vol. V. p.26-7.

Identifier: | JB/015/197/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 15.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	015	Main Headings	deontology
Folio number	197	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	linking material	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f58
Penner	sir john bowring	Watermarks	j green 1832
Marginals		Paper Producer	fc1
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year	1832
Notes public		ID Number	5413
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