rases which approximated with sufficient accuracy to
the ideas which then were from time to time forming on the subject of
political obligation. The doctrine of an Original Compact can never be
put higher than it is placed by Dr. Whewell, when he suggests that,
though unsound, "it may be a _convenient_ form for the expression of
moral truths."

The extensive employment of legal language on political subjects
previously to the invention of the Original Compact, and the powerful
influence which that assumption has exercised subsequently, amply
account for the plentifulness in political science of words and
conceptions, which were the exclusive creation of Roman jurisprudence.
Of their plentifulness in Moral Philosophy a rather different
explanation must be given, inasmuch as ethical writings have laid
Roman law under contribution much more directly than political
speculations, and their authors have been much more conscious of the
extent of their obligation. In speaking of moral philosophy as
extraordinarily indebted to Roman jurisprudence, I must be understood
to intend moral philosophy as understood previously to the break in
its history effected by Kant, that is, as the science of the rules
governing human conduct, of their proper interpretation and of the
limitations to which they are subject. Since the rise of the Critical
Philosophy, moral science has almost wholly lost its older meaning,
and, except where it is preserved under a debased form in the
casuistry still cultivated by Roman Catholic theologians, it seems to
be regarded nearly universally as a branch of ontological inquiry. I
do not know that there is a single contemporary English writer, with
the exception of Dr. Whewell, who understands moral philosophy as it
was understood before it was absorbed by metaphysics and before the
groundwork of its rules came to be a more important consideration than
the rules themselves. So long, however, as ethical science had to do
with the practical regimen of conduct, it was more or less saturated
with Roman law. Like all the great subjects of modern thought, it was
originally incorporated with theology. The science of Moral Theology,
as it was at first called, and as it is still designated by the Roman
Catholic divines, was undoubtedly constructed, to the full knowledge
of its authors, by taking principles of conduct from the system of the
Church, and by using the language and methods of jurisprudence for
their express