moralists,' says the chief amongst them, 'have gone beyond
all others in affirming that the motive has nothing to do with the
morality of an action.... He who saves a fellow-creature from drowning
does what is morally right, whether his motive be duty or the hope of
being paid for his trouble.' Upon which I would observe, in passing,
that to save a fellow-creature from drowning can be deemed to be
necessarily right by none but uncompromising opponents of capital
punishment. Most others will be disposed to doubt its having been a
sufficient reason for commuting the sentence of death passed upon the
murderer of Dhuleep Sing's gamekeeper, that, owing to physical
malformation, hanging might perhaps have given him more than ordinary
pain in the neck, or perhaps have prolonged the pleasure which,
according to the select few qualified to speak from experience, is
attendant on that mode of strangulation. Neither, without sacrificing
his judgment to his feelings, could one of these doubters, if Rutherford
had been sentenced to be drowned instead of hanged, have stretched out a
hand to save the miscreant from the watery grave he so richly deserved.
That there are no actions which by reason of their beneficial
consequences are always and invariably moral, might be too much to
affirm; but I have no hesitation in saying that there are thousands, the
morality or immorality of which--their results remaining the
same--depends absolutely on their motives. Thus, if two doctors--of
whom, for distinction's sake, we will call one Smethurst and the other
Smith--in attendance on patients afflicted with precisely the same
disease, were by the administration of overdoses of strychnine each to
kill his man, the only difference between them being that whereas one
intended and expected to kill, the other hoped to cure--would the act of
killing be equally immoral in both cases? Would it not in the one case
be murder, in the other mere error of judgment; and would both be
equally crimes, or would the latter be in any degree criminal? And if it
had been Smethurst instead of Smith who committed the error of
judgment--if the overdoses by which he had meant to kill had happened to
cure--would his error of judgment have thereby been rendered moral,
notwithstanding that his motive was murder?

The same great teacher, who so strenuously insists that the motive has
nothing to do with the morality of an action, does indeed go on to say
that it has 'much to d