insecure, nor are bribes more the order of the day, than in the first country, nor is the administration of justice more corrupt in any country than in several colonies of the latter. If jury, judge and witness falter in their duty, no Russell can be saved. This is a truth so simple, that we should hardly expect it ever to have escaped the mind of legislators, yet all codes of former times are filled with laws which proclaim what cannot be ordained, or extend over so purely private matters as to resist all demands or ordinances from without. There are laws in those codes which ordain that the subject shall love the king; and the Spanish laws prohibit "crying and other immoderate grief for the defunct," (1) while they decree dreadful punishments for "erring, and not believing what the holy church holds and teaches."

(1) "Ninguno haga llantos, ni otros duelos immoderados por los defuntos, especialmente desfigurando y rasgando la cara," &c. Extracto de la Novísima Recompilacion de Leyes de España. vols. VII. Madrid 1815. Lib. 1, Titulo 1, 9.

VI. Nothing would be farther from me than the intention of conveying an idea, that wise laws are unimportant. They are all-important; they support, aid, check, elevate, cultivate and perpetuate. Good laws are the best legacy which one generation can leave to another; the greatest blessing of a community is a long continued series of wise and sound laws. We have but to look at such a law as enacts a general school system; still the first fulcrum on which they lean, so that they can operate, is the sound state of the community-a fact which the ancients well knew and repeatedly mentioned. Without general morality, that is, good customs, there can be no sound commonwealth; nor can there be general without private morality; but private morality is best preserved where it has grown into good custom. "Custom," says Bacon, "is the chief magistrate of man's life; men should, therefore, endeavor by all means to obtain good customs."

It is evident, therefore, that in this point of view every virtuous disposition, morality in all its manifestations is of elementary importance for the well-being of the state. But there are certain virtues, as well as vices, which are of peculiar importance to the state, because they either prompt more frequently to public acts, or come more often, than others, into play in political life. Of these I propose to say a few words before I discuss some of the most important situations in which the citizen is called upon conscientiously to act, although not guided by any law.

Before I close this section I would refer once more to the remarks which were made in the first volume (1) on the fact that private virtues may exist without a sufficient attention to public ones. Indeed, it has not been maintained, in the above remarks, that private morality alone, be it ever so extensive, ensures public welfare. The government of a people may for a long time have so effectually acted upon the principle of interference, and may have smothered so entirely all public spirit, public interest and public activity in the people, that the state may sink despite of all morality, and when a time of danger arrives, the state may break down like an undermined fabric. I do not believe that any one will charge the Prussian people, as they were before the battle at Jena, with general depravity. Yet the state crumbled rapidly into pieces after that battle had been lost-more easily than any state ever could have done, in which the people at large acted vigorously with the government, whatever the final issue of the war may be. This same epoch, however, furnishes us likewise with an example, how vigorous a support politics derive from, and how rapid may be the growth of public spirit if sown upon the good morals of a people. Had the Prussians been a degenerate race, soiled with vice, meanness and crime, would they have gathered national strength even under the iron dominion of a conqueror, which weighed most heavily upon them, and would they have risen, small and shorn as their country and means were, so successfully against so powerful a foe? The rise of Prussia in 1813, with the measures which prepared it, and the most strenuous national exertion to expel the conquerors, shortly after that country had been dismembered, forms an instance of great interest in the sphere of political ethics.

Private morality in free countries, however, will go very far to ensure common success; yet even here we must not forget that moral rectitude alone cannot cause any state to flourish; good counsel is likewise necessary. Laws must not only be made by well meaning people, but they must be wise laws; and while the moral tone of society is of primary importance in free countries, prudence and sound counsel in the statesman or lawmaker is not less so. For wise laws must be made with reference to the citizens themselves, the period they live in, and the neighbors who surround them.

On the other hand there have been distinguished writers on subjects of politics, who seem to have considered good laws and wise institutions as the first foundation of political success, and as those agents by which general good conduct is first engendered, or which have secured success to many states although private virtue existed but in a very limited extent. When power was mistaken for government, and government for state, it was but natural that increase of power, brilliant external success, conquest or other aggrandizement should, at times, have been taken as a sufficient index of political success; yet even then it was frequently not considered whether degradation and ruin followed this very success. Or, the standard of judgment has been a certain preconceived index of good government, for instance a certain division of power. Nor has sufficient attention been paid to the fact that frequently the good effect of former better periods is felt in later worse ones, yet only for a time, because the degenerate state of the latter is unable to perpetuate them.

Hume seems to me to have fallen into this latter error when he says: "The ages of the greatest public spirit are not always most eminent for private virtue. Good laws may beget order and moderation in the government, where the manners and customs have instilled little humanity or justice into the tempers of men. The most illustrious period of the Roman history, considered in a political view, is that between the beginning of the first and end of the last Punic war; the due balance between the nobility and people being then fixed by the contests of the tribunes, and not being yet lost by the extent of conquests. Yet at this very time, the horrid practice of poisoning was so common, that during part of the season, a prætor punished capitally for this crime above three thousand persons in a part of Italy." (2) I think that if the history of any state teaches in bold examples the political value of virtue, and the political misery following upon depravity, in short, the almost constant reciprocal action of private and public virtue in free states, it is the history of Rome. Take those virtues which form the common stock of man's moralityjustice, honesty and a pure family life-and say whether a state can lastingly succeed without them; whether they form not the very sap which gives soundness to the whole body politic. One who knew well the operation and effect of many political elements, both by his station in life and because he lived in a period, which followed that of a depravity in the upper classes, equaled only by that of very few other corrupt periods, Napoleon, said, "Public morals are the natural complement of all laws; they of themselves form an entire code." (3)

(1) Chapter v.

(2) Hume's Essay, That Politics may be reduced to a Science. Essay iii, vol. iii of his Philos. Works, Edinb. 1826.

(3) Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, vol. vii, p. 123, Paris, 1824.

VII. Of all the virtues, peculiarly important in politics, the chief place must be assigned to justice and fortitude or perseverance, for honesty and moderation, without which no state indeed can last or flourish, may be comprised within the first, if we take it in its widest sense; yet they deserve particular mention. Justice and Fortitude may well be called the two elementary virtues of every citizen no less than of the statesman in particular.

Justice, if we designate by this sacred word, that virtue, which is the constant will, desire and readiness faithfully to give every one his due, and do not