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Man can a Man, as I conceive, make up in his Mind
a Judgment of any Law whatsoever that is not
referable to one or other of them.
In this Outline therefore we may observe
traced out the Summit and Limits of Improvement.
That Law is the best on the Subject which comes within
the 8th. Case; That Nation has the best Laws which
has the most of them of this sort.
[+] And this appears to be a Specimen of that
Mode of Investigation of which Locke had an implicit
Notion when he maintained that proposition
which has since been so much dwelt upon by subsequent
Moralists "that moral Truths were susceptible
of Demonstration as truly as those of Mathematics,
as one may see by the Examples he has adduced:
tho' he had not settled into the Track, rejecting all
technical & fictitious Standards, of resorting on all
Occasions to the one true & natural one of Utility.
The seeds first sown by that great and original
Genius had not grown up to that full Harvest of Intelligence
which has since been gathered: Hume,
D'Alembert, Voltaire, Helvetius, Beccaria had not written not
Good Evil is not to be done; say certain moralists
that good may come — this proposition is
abominable — What truth there is in
this; one may now perceive — Tis a
notable theme to expatiate on & which
has given occasion to marry notable
— — The result of them all is
that there should in fact be no such things
as Laws
One may see the sophism that has had
men into this train of thinking. [Tis as if
a man should pretend he never owed any thing
because he had never been without money
to pay discharge his debts]
Tis the effect of that weakness of Judgment,
that imipetentia, which
will not suffer those to poise themselves
upon the tho' for a moment between good and
evil, necessary as it is, in order to
make a just estimate of the amount
of cash.
One may perceive that these observations, if true
in respect of any sort of laws, are so in respect of all;
in what other soever particulars they may [differ]
be distinguishable:
INTROD. A LAW. 8 Cases in respect of it's expediency [BR]a] ]
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introd. a law - 8 cases in respect of its expediency |
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