ing a few magical syllables, has now
rendered it fit for my use and service. Were this house placed in the
neighbouring territory, it had been immoral for me to dwell in it;
but being built on this side the river, it is subject to a different
municipal law, and by its becoming mine I incur no blame or censure.
The same species of reasoning it may be thought, which so successfully
exposes superstition, is also applicable to justice; nor is it possible,
in the one case more than in the other, to point out, in the object,
that precise quality or circumstance, which is the foundation of the
sentiment.

But there is this material difference between SUPERSTITION and JUSTICE,
that the former is frivolous, useless, and burdensome; the latter is
absolutely requisite to the well-being of mankind and existence of
society. When we abstract from this circumstance (for it is too apparent
ever to be overlooked) it must be confessed, that all regards to right
and property, seem entirely without foundation, as much as the grossest
and most vulgar superstition. Were the interests of society nowise
concerned, it is as unintelligible why another's articulating certain
sounds implying consent, should change the nature of my actions with
regard to a particular object, as why the reciting of a liturgy by a
priest, in a certain habit and posture, should dedicate a heap of brick
and timber, and render it, thenceforth and for ever, sacred.

[Footnote: It is evident, that the will or consent alone never
transfers property, nor causes the obligation of a promise (for the same
reasoning extends to both), but the will must be expressed by words or
signs, in order to impose a tie upon any man. The expression being once
brought in as subservient to the will, soon becomes the principal part
of the promise; nor will a man be less bound by his word, though he
secretly give a different direction to his intention, and withhold the
assent of his mind. But though the expression makes, on most occasions,
the whole of the promise, yet it does not always so; and one who should
make use of any expression, of which he knows not the meaning, and which
he uses without any sense of the consequences, would not certainly be
bound by it. Nay, though he know its meaning, yet if he use it in jest
only, and with such signs as evidently show, that he has no serious
intention of binding himself, he would not lie under any obligation of
performance; but it is necessa