savageness is retained.  Of general happiness, the product of general confidence, there is yet no thought.  Men continue to prosecute their own advantages by the nearest way; and the utmost severity of the civil law is necessary to restrain individuals from plundering each other.  The restraints then necessary, are restraints from plunder, from acts of publick violence, and undisguised oppression.  The ferocity of our ancestors, as of all other nations, produced not fraud, but rapine.  They had not yet learned to cheat, and attempted only to rob.  As manners grow more polished, with the knowledge of good, men attain, likewise, dexterity in evil.  Open rapine becomes less frequent, and violence gives way to cunning.  Those who before invaded pastures and stormed houses, now begin to enrich themselves by unequal contracts and fraudulent intromissions.

It is not against the violence of ferocity, but the circumventions of deceit, that this law was framed; and, I am afraid, the increase of commerce, and the incessant struggle for riches, which commerce excites, give us no prospect of an end speedily to be expected of artifice and fraud.  It, therefore, seems to be no very conclusive reasoning, which connects those two propositions:—­’the nation is become less ferocious, and, therefore, the laws against fraud and covin shall be relaxed.’

Whatever reason may have influenced the judges to a relaxation of the law, it was not that the nation was grown less fierce; and, I am afraid, it cannot be affirmed, that it is grown less fraudulent.

Since this law has been represented as rigorously and unreasonably penal, it seems not improper to consider, what are the conditions and qualities that make the justice or propriety of a penal law.

To make a penal law reasonable and just, two conditions are necessary, and two proper.  It is necessary that the law should be adequate to its end; that, if it be observed, it shall prevent the evil against which it is directed.  It is, secondly, necessary that the end of the law be of such importance as to deserve the security of a penal sanction.  The other conditions of a penal law, which, though not absolutely necessary, are, to a very high degree, fit, are, that to the moral violation of the law there are many temptations, and, that of the physical observance there is great facility.

All these conditions apparently concur to justify the law which we are now considering.  Its end is the security of property, and property very often of great value.  The method by which it effects the security is efficacious, because it admits, in its original rigour, no gradations of injury; but keeps guilt and innocence apart, by a distinct and definite limitation.  He that intromits, is criminal; he that intromits not, is innocent.  Of the two secondary considerations it cannot be denied that both are in our favour.  The temptation to intromit is frequent and strong; so strong, and so frequent,