e precedence of
that of tradesmen's bills, and that less courtesy is due to persons in
an inferior station than to those in our own, which at least merit
re-consideration. It may, indeed, be said of all these laws or codes of
honour, that, though they have probably, on the whole, a salutary effect
in maintaining a high standard of conduct in the various bodies or
classes where they obtain, they require to be constantly watched, lest
they should become capricious or tyrannical, and specially lest they
should conflict with the wider interests of society or the deeper
instincts of morality. It must not be forgotten that we are 'men' before
we are 'gentlemen,' and that no claims of any profession, institution,
or class can replace or supplant those of humanity and citizenship.

We see, then, or rather we are obliged at the present stage of our
enquiry to assume, that the social sanction, whether it be derived from
the average sentiment of society at large or from the customs and
opinions of particular aggregates of society, requires constant
correction at the hands of the moralist. The sentiment which it
represents may be only the sentiment of men of average moral tone, or it
may even be that of men of an inferior or degraded morality, and hence
it often needs to be tested by the application of rules derived from a
higher standard both of feeling and intelligence. Nor is it the moral
standard only which may be used to correct the social standard. We may
often advantageously have recourse to the legal standard for the same
purpose. For the laws of a country express, as a rule, the sentiments of
the wisest and most experienced of its citizens, and hence we might
naturally expect that they would be in advance of the average moral
sentiment of the people, as well as of the social traditions of
particular professions or classes. And this I believe to be usually the
case. For instances, we have to go no further than the comparison
between the laws and the popular or professional sentiment on bribery at
elections, on smuggling, on evasion of taxation, on fraudulent business
transactions, on duelling, on prize-fighting, or on gambling. At the
same time it must be confessed that, as laws sometimes become
antiquated, and the leanings of lawyers are proverbially conservative,
it occasionally happens that, on some points, the average moral
sentiment is in advance of the law. I may select as examples, from
comparatively recent legal his