just traced, yet harmonizing as they do with conclusions deducible from every-day experience, they unquestionably enforce these. When, after observing the reactions entailed by breaches of equity, the citizen contemplates the relation in which he stands to the body politic-when he learns that it has a species of life, and conforms to the same laws of growth, organization, and sensibility that a being does-when he finds that one vitality circulates through it and him, and that whilst social health, in a measure, depends upon the fulfilment of some function in which he takes part, his happiness depends upon the normal action of every organ in the social body-when he duly understands this, he must see that his own welfare and all men's welfare are inseparable. He must see that whatever produces a diseased state in one part of the community, must inevitably inflict injury upon all other parts. He must see that his own life can become what it should be, only as fast as society becomes what it should be. In short, he must become impressed with the salutary truth, that no one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy. CHAPTER XXXI. SUMMARY. 1. By bringing within narrow compass the evi dences that have beer. adduced in support of the Theory of Equity now before him, the reader will be aided in coming to a final judgment upon it. At the head of these evidences stands the fact that, from whatever side we commence the investigation, our CONVERGENCE OF THE ARGUMENTS. 499 paths alike converge toward the principle of which this theory is a development. If we start with an a priori inquiry into the conditions under which alone the Divine Idea-greatest happiness-can be realized, we find that conformity to the law of equal freedom is the first of them (Chap. III.). If, turning to man's constitution, we consider the means provided for achieving greatest happiness, we quickly reason our way back to this same condition; seeing that these means cannot work out their end, unless the law of equal freedom is submitted to (Chap. IV.). If, pursuing the analysis a step further, we examine how subordination to the law of equal freedom is secured, we discover certain faculties by which that law is responded to (Chap. V.). If, again, we contemplate the phenomena of civilization, we perceive that the process of adaptation under which they may be generalized, can never cease until men have become instinctively obedient to this same law of equal freedom (Chap. II.). To all which positive proofs may also be added the negative one, that to deny his law of equal freedom is to assert divers absurdities (Chap. VI.). 2. Further confirmation may be found in the cir cumstance that preexisting theories, which are untenable as they stand, are yet absorbed, and the portion of truth contained in them assimilated, by the theory now proposed. Thus the production of the greatest happiness, though inapplicable as an immediate guide for men, is nevertheless the true end of morality, regarded from the Divine point of view; and as such, forms part of the pres ent system (Chap. III.). The moral-sense principle, also, whilst misapplied by its propounders, is still based on fact; and, as was shown, harmonizes when rightly interpreted, with what seem conflicting beliefs, and unites with them to produce a complete whole. Add to this, that the phi losophy now contended for, includes, and affords a wider application to, Adam Smith's doctrine of sympathy (p. 115); and lastly, that it gives the finishing development to Coleridge's "Idea of Life" (p. 476). 3. The power which the proposed theory possesses of reducing the leading precepts of current morality to a scientific form, and of comprehending them, in company with sundry less acknowledged precepts, under one generalization, may also be quoted as additional evidence in its favour. Not as heretofore by considering whether, on the whole, manslaughter is productive of unhappiness, or otherwise-not by inquiring if theft is, or is not, expedient-not by asking in the case of slavery what are its effects on the common weal-not by any such complex and inexact processes, neither by the disputable decisions of unaided moral sense, are we here guided; but by undeniable inferences from a proved first principle. Nor are only the chief rules of right conduct and the just ordering of the connubial and parental relationships thus determined for us; this same first principle indirectly gives distinct answers respecting the proper constitution of governments, their duties, and the limits to their action. Out of an endless labyrinth of confused debate concerning the policy of these or those public measures, it opens short and easily-discerned ways; and the conclusions it leads to are enforced, both generally, by an abundant experience of the fallacy of expediency decisions, and specially, by numerous arguments bearing on each successive question. Underlying, therefore, as this first principle does, so wide a range of duty, and applied as it is by a process of meutal admeasurement nearly related to the geometricalnamely, by ascertaining the equality or inequality of moral quantities (p. 128)—we may consider that a system of ethics synthetically developed from it, partakes of the AGREEMENTS OF MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 501 character of an exact science; and as doing this possesses additional claims to our confidence. 4. Again, the injunctions of the moral law, as now interpreted, coincide with and anticipate those of political economy. Political economy teaches that restric tions upon commerce are detrimental: the moral law denounces them as wrong (Chap. XXIII.). Political economy tells us that loss is entailed by a forced trade with colonies: the moral law will not permit such a trade to be established (Chap. XXVII.). Political economy says it is good that speculators should be allowed to operate on the food-markets as they see well: the law of equal freedom (contrary to the current notion) holds them justified in doing this, and condemns all interference with them as inequitable. Penalties upon usury are proved by political economy to be injurious: by the law of equal freedom they are prohibited as involving an infringement of rights. According to political economy, machinery is beneficial to the people, rather than hurtful to them: in unison with this the law of equal freedom forbids all attempts to restrict its use. One of the settled conclusions of political economy is, that wages and prices cannot be artificially regulated: meanwhile it is an obvious inference from the law of equal freedom that no artificial regulation of them is morally permissible. We are taught by political economy that to be least injurious taxation must be direct: coincidently we find that direct taxation is the only kind of taxation against which the law of equal freedom does not unconditionally protest (p. 231). On sundry other questions, such as the hurtfulness of tamperings with cur rency, the futility of endeavours to permanently benefit one occupation at the expense of others, the impropriety of legislative interference with manufacturing processes, &c., the conclusions of political economy are similarly at one with the dictates of this law. And thus the laboured arguments of Adam Smith and his successors are forestalled, and for practical purposes made needless, by the simplest deductions of fundamental morality: a fact, which, perhaps, will not be duly realized until it is seen that the inferences of political economy are true, only because they are discoveries by a roundabout process of what the moral law commands. 8 5. Moreover, the proposed theory includes a philosophy of civilization. Whilst in its ethical aspect it ignores evil, yet in its psychological aspect it shows how evil disappears. Whilst, as an abstract statement of what conduct should be, it assumes human perfection—is, in fact, the law of that perfection-yet, as a rationale of moral phenomena, it explains why conduct is becoming what it should be, and why the process through which humanity has passed was necessary. Thus we saw that the possession by the aboriginal man of a constitution enabling him to appreciate and act up to the principles of pure rectitude would have been detrimental, and indeed fatal (p. 448). We saw that in accordance with the law of adaptation, the faculties responding to those principles began to unfold as soon as the conditions of existence called for them. From time to time it has been shown that the leading incidents of progress indicate the continued development of these faculties. That supremacy of them must precede the realization of the perfect state, has been implied in numerous places. And the influence by which their ultimate supremacy is ensured has been pointed out (Chap. II.). So that though one side of the proposed theory, in exhibiting the conditions under which alone the Divine Idea may be realized, overlooks the existing defects of mankind; the other side, in exhibiting the mental properties |