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infant daughters to death. She replied to the missionary in words of the following purport:

"Father, if you will allow me, I shall tell you what passes in my mind.-Would to God that my mother, when she brought me forth, had shown as much regard and compassion for me as to have spared me the pain I have hitherto suffered, and must continue to suffer until the end of my days. Had she buried me when I was born, I should not have felt death, and she would have preserved me from all I am indispensably subjected to, as well as from labours more cruel than death is terrifying. Alas! who knows the troubles awaiting me before it arrives? Can a mother do anything more profitable to her daughter than save her from multiplied disasters and a slavery worse than death? Would to God, father, I repeat, would to God that she who gave me life had testified her affection by depriving me of it at my birth: my heart would have had less to endure, and my eyes less to weep."*

277. Of diversities of moral judgment in connexion with an excited state of the passions.

Furthermore, there may be diversities of moral judgment; in other words, the moral nature may occasionally be perplexed and led astray in its action, under the influence of a state of excited passion.-The action of all the parts of the mind is a conditional one; that is to say, it takes place only under certain assignable circumstances. It is, for instance, one condition of moral action, as we have repeatedly had occasion to notice, that there must be an antecedent perception of the thing, whatever it is, upon which the moral judgment is to be passed. This condition of moral action is violated in the case under consideration, as well as in others. In a time of great excitement of passion, the moral emotion, which would have existed under other circumstances, has failed to arise, because the soul is intensely and wholly taken up with another species of feeling. The perceptive and comparing part of the mind is not in a situation to take a right view of the subject, whatever it is. But after the * Historical Illustrations of the Passions (Anonymous), vol. i., p. 162.

present passion has subsided, so as to give the person an opportunity to inquire and reflect, the power of moral judgment returns. And at once the individual, who has been the subject of such violence of feeling, looks with horror on the deeds which he has committed. So that the original susceptibility, the existence of which has been contended for, cannot justly be said to be extinct in such cases, although its due exercise, as is sufficiently obvious, is prevented by the accidental circumstance of inordinate passion.

Further: those who imagine that there are no permanent moral distinctions, because they are not regarded in moments of extreme passion, would do well to consider, that at such times persons are unable rightly to apprehend any truths whatever, whether they relate to morals or anything else. A murderer, when drawing the blade from the bosom of his victim, probably could not tell the quotient of sixteen divided by four, or any other simple results in numbers; but certainly his inability to perceive them under such circumstances does not annul numerical powers and distinctions, nor prove the absolute want of a power to perceive them. Why, then, should the same inability take away moral distinctions, or prove the absolute absence of a moral susceptibility?

§ 278. Of the action of the conscience in connexion with strong temptation.

We may add to the considerations which have now been brought forward, that there may be expected to be some diversities in the decisions of the moral sensibility, occasioned by diversities in the degree of temptation which happens to bear upon it. The moral sensibility or conscience, as it developes itself in the feelings of moral obligation, is in immediate contact with the will, and furnishes a powerful motive to action. But the power of these feelings, considered as motives to action, is of course limited; it has its boundaries; it cannot overcome everything. Of course, if our desires, which are the antagonist principle of action, are very strong, there is a possibility, at least, of the sentiments of duty being overcome. And, in point of fact, this is sometimes the case.

But how does it happen that the feelings of obligation, or sentiments of duty, which so frequently predominate, have less power in these particular cases than the desires? It is because the intellect, under the instigation of the desires, gives a distorted view of things, representing our own claims in the most favourable light, and darkening and depressing the claims of others. The conscience labours under the disadvantage of having before itself an erroneous view of the facts; which have the twofold effect of reacting upon and increasing the intensity of the desires, and, at the same time, of blunting the edge of moral perception. Hence another class of what are called violations of conscience; that is to say, of apparent want of uniformity in its decisions.

Under this head we may properly introduce a statement from the travels of Mungo Park. He is speaking of a tribe of Africans called the Mandingoes. After saying that they discovered an insurmountable propensity to steal the few articles of property which he possessed, he goes on to remark as follows: "For this part of their conduct no complete justification can be offer ed, because theft is a crime in their own estimation; and it must be observed, that they are not habitually and generally guilty of it towards each other. This, however, is an important circumstance in mitigation; and, before we pronounce them a more depraved people than any other, it were well to consider whether the lower order of people in any part of Europe would have acted, under similar circumstances, with greater honesty towards a stranger than the Negroes acted towards me. It must not be forgotten, that the laws of the country afforded me no protection; that every one was at liberty to rob me with impunity; and, finally, that some part of my effects was of as great value in the estimation of the Negroes, as pearls and diamonds would have been in the eyes of a European. Let us suppose a black merchant of Hindostan to have found his way into the centre of England with a box of jewels at his back, and that the laws of the kingdom afforded him no security; in such a case, the wonder would be, not that the stranger was robbed of any part of his riches, but that any part was left

for a second depredator. Such, on sober reflection, is the judgment I have formed concerning the pilfering disposition of the Mandingo Negroes towards myself. Notwithstanding I was so great a sufferer by it, I do not consider that their natural sense of justice was perverted or extinguished; it was overpowered only for the moment, by the strength of a temptation which it required no common virtue to resist.

"On the other hand, as some counterbalance to this depravity in their nature, allowing it to be such, it is im possible for me to forget the disinterested charity and ten der solicitude with which many of these poor heathens, from the sovereign of Sego to the poor women who received me at different times in their cottages when I was perishing of hunger, sympathized with my sufferings, relieved my distresses, and contributed to my safety."*

279. Of the existence of a moral nature in connexion with public robbers and outlaws from society.

In concluding this subject, there are one or two topics remaining which may be worthy of a brief notice.Those who object to the doctrine of a moral sense will be likely to appeal, in support of their own view of the subject, to the conduct of robbers and outlaws from society. In regard to these persons, we are to consider, in the first place, that they are few in number compared with the whole number of mankind. And the fact that a few persons appear to be destitute of a conscience ought not to be admitted in positive disproof of a doctrine which is supported by the evidence presented in so great a majority of cases. Furthermore, before the cases of those persons referred to can be entitled to much weight in the present discussion, it might be important to know under what circumstances they seceded from society, and became the enemies of their species. Is it not possible that some, perhaps many, of these individuals were driven into their present evil course by cruel disappointment and poverty, combined with contempt, injustice, and oppression on the part of their fellow-men? It is certainly supposable, under circumstances. so trying, * Park's Travels in Africa, p. 297.

VOL. II.-EE

that misanthropy, deeply rooted and terrible, may spring up in hearts that, in better days, were distinguished from others only by a higher degree of sensibility and honour. It is somewhere related, that, a few years since, an Englishman was impressed on board a ship of war. He left behind him a wife and a number of children. The woman some time afterward was found guilty of stealing a piece of cloth, and was executed. At her trial and execution she confessed the crime, and simply mentioned, in extenuation of her guilt, that the deed was committed under the influence of temptation, originating from the extreme want and suffering of herself and her children, consequent on the cruel and constrained absence of her husband. Is easy to imagine the terrible feelings which must have convulsed the bosom of the husband on his return? With the bitter recollection constantly present to his thoughts, that he had himself been torn away from his family by the unfeeling hand of arbitrary power, and that his wife was ignominiously put to death by the same power, for a crime of which, unquestionably, his own forced absence was the occasion, it would not be greatly surprising if he became from that moment the enemy of his country and his species, and lived only for revenge. But as we see him afterward a pirate and a robber, burning with hatred and clothed with blood, we are not at liberty to say absolutely that he has no conscience. The truth is, that such overwhelming feelings of grief, hatred, and revenge have seized the mind, that the conscience, if we may so express it, is smothered beneath them. In the fever and madness of the brain, in the convulsions and clamours around, and above, and beneath it, its still small voice has ceased to be heard.-Things of this nature are obviously to be taken into consideration in forming a just estimate of all cases of this kind.

280. Illustration of the fact that there are the remains of conscientious feeling even in the most depraved of men.

But there is another view which is worthy of notice in connexion with this subject, viz., that among the most depraved and hardened of mankind, among thieves and robbers, we sometimes discover a kindness to one another,

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