to human life; not one that the world has not done without, and is not capable of doing without again. It speedily learns how to dispense with those which cease to be valuable. If the bar is to keep its place and its power, it must be and can only be by maintaining the great usefulness through which they have been acquired. It must continue to be what it has been, the efficient means and instrument of salutary and satisfactory public justice. It is not enough that the administration of justice should be the ostensible purpose of the vocation of the law. The only justification for its existence, the only warrant for its privileges, is, and must always be, "the good justice that is done in the land." So long as that is real and efficient, there is no better and no more honorable employment. When it becomes unreal, the profession that lives by pretending to do it is only a mischievous sham.

It is not, therefore, by science however profound, by talents however brilliant, by industry however worthy, by distinctions and emoluments however splendid, that the calling of the law can maintain the place it holds in civilized society. Should it ever become only a theatre for display, a stepping-stone for advancement, or a market-place for gain, should it ever come to be generally felt that the justice it offers is not genuine, there would be nothing that could or ought to save it from "the wreck of the things that have perished." The rewards of earnest and honorable exertion in its pursuits are perfectly legitimate, and in every way desirable. But they must follow, not be run after, they must be secondary, not primary, the fruit of what is done for others, rather

than of what is done for self. And the profession and all that pertains to it will flourish and prosper exactly in proportion to the degree in which it continues to be the instrument of actual and substantial justice.

But what is justice? The word is of constant recurrence; what does it precisely mean? We sometimes hear of what is called the distinction between law and justice; is there such a distinction? Is the law, with which we have to do, or are we, its ministers, justly subject to the reproach of administering wrong under the name of right? What, in short, is the true relation of law to justice? Perhaps you will indulge me in a few words on this point.

The fundamental principles of justice between man and his fellows are inherent in the human conscience. They derive their authority from the spontaneous and universal recognition of intelligent humanity, as well as from divine revelation. Moral philosophy is natural philosophy. These acknowledged principles, and the application of them to the conduct of mankind, constitute what is understood as moral justice.

If every transaction among men, involving mutual rights, could be regulated, and every dispute determined upon the abstract moral relations of each case as it arises, the perfection of justice would be realized. But that is beyond the power of human discrimination. Either to determine exactly what is moral right, under the varying and complicated circumstances that often surround transactions, or to deal with every successive case upon a special rule of its own, would be equally impossible; and the attempt must result in intolerable

confusion. Only the Almighty could administer such justice, and He has never seen fit to employ it in the government of the world.

It is as essential, also, that law should be known, so that conduct may be regulated by its precepts, as that it should be just. A vague discretion reposed in a court to administer what should appear to be moral justice, even were it possible to effect it, would not be law; because its result could never be anticipated, or its requirements understood.

Legal justice ought to form the nearest approach to moral justice that human tribunals are capable of. But it must always take effect through general rules, applicable to all men alike who stand in the same legal conditions. It must necessarily, therefore, fall short of strict moral justice in certain individual cases, because no general rule of law ever existed, or ever can exist, that does not result in hardship in exceptional instances. And the distinction between moral and legal justice I conceive to be this: that the one is the justice of the particular case and the other the justice of the necessary general rule, which usually, but not always, coincides with the justice of the particular case. It is the framing of these general rules in such manner as to bring about practical justice in the greatest number of cases, and with the fewest exceptions, that constitutes the science of jurisprudence; and the application of them to actual affairs becomes its business.

Now, it will be obvious to a very slight attention that any system of general rules adequate to the regulation of personal conduct must necessarily divide into two very different classes, the principal and the

subordinate; those that rest upon and enforce moral rights, and those that are prescribed by mere policy. Perhaps the one class might properly be called principles and the other rules. The first appeals to conscience, and applies to all questions that involve considerations of abstract justice. The second invokes the understanding only, and affects merely the convenience of society and the methods of business.

It may be the dictate of moral justice that a widow should receive a just provision from her husband's estate. But it is not a question of moral justice whether that provision should be a third, three-eighths, or one-half. It is clear moral justice that an indorser on whose credit money is borrowed should be answerable for its payment. But there is no element of that kind in the inquiry whether the bill should have three days' grace, or what should be the time and manner of demand or protest, or the form of action. The same distinction between the essential and the convenient runs through the whole body of the law.

In attempting to consider, therefore, how far legal and moral justice are coincident, it is indispensable to keep clearly in view this distinction between the foundation and the superstructure; between the principles that underlie law and the rules that result from it; between that which is law because it is right, and that which is right because it is law. In respect to the one, the citizen is entitled to complain if the requirements to which he is subject do not accord with the fundamental principles of justice. But the vast mass of inferior and changeable regulations through which those principles are made effectual, which are prescribed by constituted authority for public con

venience only, and are dictated by experience and sound policy, rest upon an entirely different foundation. If they are only reasonable, uniform, intelligible, and impartial, they answer all the purposes of justice, and become its machinery.

It seems difficult for some minds to observe this distinction. They regard all law as arbitrary. They are unable to separate its conception from the idea of a superior authority which prescribes it. They confound its source with its enforcement, and regard its obligation as derived from the power which executes it rather than from the principles on which it rests. This is true, as has been remarked, of those regulations arising out of policy and convenience only. To that extent law is undoubtedly arbitrary; government is its author, and not only enforces, but creates it. And the mere enactment of the law raises the obligation in the subject to obey it, until modified or repealed. But it is not true of that less voluminous but far more important body of the law which is derived from moral justice. That, too, is enacted and prescribed by governmental authority, or it would not be law. But such enactments are not discretionary, and are obligatory on the power that makes them. To observe and give effect to their principles is the first duty of government. Freedom in government consists in the power of the subjects always to compel, by constitutional means, and even by revolution, if necessary, the observance of this obligation. No free government could stand, or ought to stand, that should intentionally undertake to disregard it.

It has seemed to me that some confusion of ideas on this subject has arisen from an erroneous view