y and industry cannot preserve the
greater number from perishing, and the whole from extreme misery. It
will readily, I believe, be admitted that the strict laws of justice are
suspended in such a pressing emergence, and give place to the stronger
motives of necessity and self-preservation. Is it any crime, after a
shipwreck, to seize whatever means or instrument of safety one can lay
hold of, without regard to former limitations of properly? Or if a city
besieged were perishing with hunger; can we imagine that men will see
any means of preservation before them, and lose their lives from a
scrupulous regard to what, in other situations, would be the rules of
equity and justice? The use and tendency of that virtue is to procure
happiness and security, by preserving order in society. But where the
society is ready to perish from extreme necessity, no greater evil can
be dreaded from violence and injustice; and every man may now provide
for himself by all the means which prudence can dictate, or humanity
permit. The public, even in less urgent necessities, opens granaries
without the consent of proprietors; as justly supposing, that the
authority of magistracy may, consistent with equity, extend so far. But
were any number of men to assemble, without the tie of laws or civil
jurisdiction; would an equal partition of bread in a famine, though
effected by power and even violence, be regarded as criminal or
injurious? Suppose, likewise, that it should be a virtuous man's fate
to fall into the society of ruffians, remote from the protection of
laws and government; what conduct must he embrace in that melancholy
situation? He sees such a desperate rapaciousness prevail; such a
disregard to equity, such contempt of order, such stupid blindness
to future consequences, as must immediately have the most tragical
conclusion, and must terminate in destruction to the greater number, and
in a total dissolution of society to the rest. He, meanwhile, can have
no other expedient than to arm himself, to whomever the sword he seizes,
or the buckler may belong: to make provision of all means of defence and
security: and his particular regard to justice being no longer of use
to his own safety or that of others, he must consult the dictates of
self-preservation alone, without concern for those who no longer merit
his care and attention.... But perhaps the difficulty of accounting for
these effects of usefulness, or its contrary, has kept philos