or from an involuntary one, as by a madman, or person sinking in the water and dragging us after him; or where two persons are reduced to a situation, in which one or both of them must perish; as in a shipwreck, where two seize upon a plank, which will support only one: although, to say the truth, these extreme cases, which happen seldom, and hardly, when they do happen, admit of moral agency, are scarcely worth mentioning, much less discussing at length.

The instance, which approaches the nearest to the preservation of life, and which seems to justify the same extremities, is the defence of chastity.

In all other cases, it appears to me the safest to consider the taking away of life as authorized by the law of the land; and the person who takes it away, as in the situation of a minister or executioner of the law.

In which view homicide, in England, is justifiable,

1. To prevent the commission of a crime, which, when committed, would be punishable with death. Thus it is lawful to shoot a highwayman, or one attempting to break into a house by night; but not so if the attempt be made in the day-time; which particular distinction, by a consent of legislation that is remarkable, obtained also in the Jewish law, as well as in the laws both of Greece and Rome.

2. In necessary endeavours to carry the law into execution,as in suppressing riots,apprehending malefactors, preventing escapes, &c.

I do not know that the law holds forth its author ity to any cases beside those which fall within one or other of the above descriptions; or that, after the exception of immediate danger to life or chastity, the destruction of a human being can be innocent without that authority.

The rights of war are not here taken into the

account.

CHAPTER II.

DRUNKENNESS.

DRUNKENNESS is either actual or habitual; just as it is one thing to be drunk, and another to be a drunkard. What we shall deliver upon the subject, must principally be understood of a habit of intemperance; although part of the guilt and danger described may be applicable to casual excesses; and all of it, in a certain degree, forasmuch as every habit is only a repetition of single instances.

The mischief of drunkenness, from which we are to compute the guilt of it, consists in the following bad effects:

1. It betrays most constitutions either into extravagances of anger, or sins of lewdness.

2. It disqualifies men for the duties of their station, both by the temporary disorder of their faculties, and at length by a constant incapacity and stupefaction. 3. It is attended with expenses, which can often be ill spared.

4. It is sure to occasion uneasiness to the family of the drunkard.

5. It shortens life.

To these consequences of drunkenness must be added the peculiar danger and mischief of the example. Drunkenness is a social festive vice; apt, beyond any vice that can be mentioned, to draw in others by the example. The drinker collects his circle; the circle naturally spreads; of those who are drawn within it, many become the corrupters and centres of sets and circles of their own; every one countenancing, and, perhaps, emulating the rest, till a whole neighbourhood be infected from the contagion of a single example. This account is confirmed by what we often ob serve of drunkenness, that it is a local vice; found to prevail in certain countries, in certain districts of a country, or in particular towns, without any reason

H H

to be given for the fashion, but that it had been introduced by some popular examples. With this observa tion upon the spreading quality of drunkenness, let us connect a remark which belongs to the several evil effects above recited. The consequences of a vice, like the symptoms of a disease, though they be all enumerated in the description, seldom all meet in the same subject. In the instance under consideration, the age and temperature of one drunkard may have little to fear from inflammations of lust or anger; the fortune of a second may not be injured by the expense; a third may have no family to be disquieted by his irregu larities; and a fourth may possess a constitution fortified against the poison of strong liquors. But if, as we always ought to do, we comprehend within the consequences of our conduct the mischief and tendency of the example, the above circumstances, however fortunate for the individual, will be found to vary the guilt of his intemperance, less, probably, than he supposes. The moralist may expostulate with him thus: Although the waste of time and money be of small importance to you, it may be of the utmost to some one or other whom your society cor rupts. Repeated, or long continued excesses, which hurt not your health, may be fatal to your companion. Although you have neither wife, nor child, nor parent, to lament your absence from home, or expect your return to it with terror; other families, in which husbands and fathers have been invited to share in your ebriety, or encouraged to imitate it, may justly lay their misery or ruin at your door. This will hold good, whether the person seduced, be seduced immediately by you, or the vice be propagated from you to him, through several intermediate examples. All these considerations it is necessa ry to assemble, to judge truly of a vice, which usually meets with milder names, and more indulgence

than it deserves.

the

I omit those outrages upon one another, and upon peace and safety of the neighbourhood, in which

drunken revels often end; and also those deleterious and maniacal effects, which strong liquors produce upon particular constitutions; because, in general propositions concerning drunkenness, no consequences should be included, but what are constant enough to be generally expected.

Drunkenness is repeatedly forbidden by St. Paul: "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess.' "Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness." "Be not deceived: neither. fornicators-nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God," Eph. v. 18. Rom. xiii. 13. 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10. The same Apostle likewise condemns drunkenness, as peculiarly inconsistent with the Christian profession: "They that be drunken, are drunken in the night; but let us, who are of the day, be sober." 1 Thes. v. 7, 8. We are not concerned with the argument; the words amount to a prohibition of drunkenness; and the authority" is conclusive.

It is a question of some importance, how far drunkenness is an excuse for the crimes which the drunk-. en person commits.

In the solution of this question, we will first suppose the drunken person to be altogether deprived of moral agency, that is to say, of all reflection and foresight. In this condition, it is evident, that he is no more capable of guilt than a madman; although, like him, he may be extremely mischievous. The only guilt, with which he is chargeable, was incurred at the time when he voluntarily brought himself into this situation. And as every man is responsible for the consequences which he foresaw, or might have foreseen, and for no other, this guilt will be in proportion to the probability of such consequences ensuing. From which principle results the following rule, viz. that the guilt of any action in a drunken man bears the same proportion to the guilt of the like action in a sober man, that the probability of its being the consequence of drunkenness bears to ab

solute certainty. By virtue of this rule, those vices, which are the known effect of drunkenness, either in general, or upon particular constitutions, are, in all, or in men of such constitutions, nearly as criminal, as if committed with all their faculties and senses about them.

If the privation of reason be only partial, the guilt will be of a mixt nature. For so much of his selfgovernment as the drunkard retains, he is as responsible then, as at any other time. He is entitled to no abatement, beyond the strict proportion in which his moral faculties are impaired. Now I call the guilt of the crime, if a sober man had committed it, the whole guilt. A person in the condition we describe, incurs part of this at the instant of perpetration; and by bringing himself into such a condition, incurred that fraction of the remaining part, which the danger of this consequence was of an integral certainty. For the sake of illuftration, we are at liberty to suppose, that a man loses half his moral faculties by drunkenness this leaving him but half his responsibility, he incurs, when he commits the action, half of the whole guilt. We will also suppose that it was known beforehand, that it was an even chance, or half a certainty, that this crime would follow his getting drunk. This makes him chargeable with half of the remainder; so that altogether, he is responsible in three fourths of the guilt, which a sober man would have incurred by the same action.

I do not mean that any real case can be reduced to numbers, or the calculation be ever made with arithmetical precision but these are the principles, and this the rule, by which our general admeasurement of the guilt of such offences should be regulated.

The appetite for intoxicating liquors appears to me to be almost always acquired. One proof of which is, that it is apt to return only at particular times and places; as after dinner, in the evening, on the mar ket day, at the market town, in such a company, at