se
which offers. They deprive, without scruple, a beneficent man of all his
possessions, if acquired by mistake, without a good title; in order to
bestow them on a selfish miser, who has already heaped up immense stores
of superfluous riches. Public utility requires that property should be
regulated by general inflexible rules; and though such rules are adopted
as best serve the same end of public utility, it is impossible for them
to prevent all particular hardships, or make beneficial consequences
result from every individual case. It is sufficient, if the whole plan
or scheme be necessary to the support of civil society, and if the
balance of good, in the main, do thereby preponderate much above that of
evil. Even the general laws of the universe, though planned by infinite
wisdom, cannot exclude all evil or inconvenience in every particular
operation.

It has been asserted by some, that justice arises from Human
Conventions, and proceeds from the voluntary choice, consent, or
combination of mankind. If by CONVENTION be here meant a PROMISE (which
is the most usual sense of the word) nothing can be more absurd than
this position. The observance of promises is itself one of the most
considerable parts of justice, and we are not surely bound to keep our
word because we have given our word to keep it. But if by convention be
meant a sense of common interest, which sense each man feels in his
own breast, which he remarks in his fellows, and which carries him, in
concurrence with others, into a general plan or system of actions, which
tends to public utility; it must be owned, that, in this sense, justice
arises from human conventions. For if it be allowed (what is, indeed,
evident) that the particular consequences of a particular act of justice
may be hurtful to the public as well as to individuals; it follows that
every man, in embracing that virtue, must have an eye to the whole plan
or system, and must expect the concurrence of his fellows in the same
conduct and behaviour. Did all his views terminate in the consequences
of each act of his own, his benevolence and humanity, as well as
his self-love, might often prescribe to him measures of conduct very
different from those which are agreeable to the strict rules of right
and justice.

Thus, two men pull the oars of a boat by common convention for common
interest, without any promise or contract; thus gold and silver are made
the measures of exchange; thus speech and