JB/015/296/001

Click Here To Edit

145

Perjury is lying which in the case where the religious sanction has been
put prominently forward as the guarantee for truth & the check
upon falsehood. The force of the religious sanction depends wholly
upon the state of the mind of the individual to whom it is
applied. It would will add nothing to the power of eliciting truth
in cases where the popular sanction is in full activity. In
the cases of oaths & vows the sanction is the same. The
profanation of a vow diminishes the force of the sanction as applied to
promises of future conduct, it therefore diminishes the force of the same
sanction as applied to relations of past conduct or past events.

There are cases where a vow though a promise of an undertaking for future conduct may
be violated in the act of taking it. Such is that of a vow taken to believe
a proposition of the truth of which the person vowing has no persuasion conviction at the time.

The guilty of this profanation are those who insist on this sacrifice
of principles to prejudices on pretence of securing a tranquillity best of mind which would be far better compassed
by that liberty which takes away leaves no the motives to debate disturbance.

As a means of this tranquillity their own voice is in favour of these
forced professions: the voice of experience in every country where this
liberty is perfect, and of every country in which it has been received admitted at all
as far as it has been admitted is against them.

Among the Romans, while the undertaking was confined
to respect things at once useful and practicable, such as obedience to the
order of a General, the force of this sanction was stupendous. p.211.

Veracity & mendacity are less immediately connected than the other
virtues with pleasure & pain. Hence the difficulty of assigning to their modifications the
character that belongs to them. Sincerity & insincerity, ingenuousness & disingenuousness
are more or less pernicious – more or less virtuous or vicious as their result the particular case may exhibit
them. Silence itself may not have all the mischief & culpability of mendacity, – where for
instance the conveyance of information is a matter of duty, where prudence or
benevolence require that the information should be given. Veracity in some cases
demands fortitude for an ally – & fortitude becomes a virtue when the alliance
is to further the ends of sound morality.

Identifier: | JB/015/296/001 "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	296	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	linking material	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f145
Penner	sir john bowring	Watermarks	[[watermarks::propatria [lion with sword motif]]]
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	5512
Box Contents