It would be far more easy to heap up authorities on this article than to excuse the prolixity and tediousness of producing any at all in proof of a point which, though too often practically denied, is in its theory almost self-evident.  For Suarez, handling this very question, Utrum de ratione et substantia legis esse ut propter commune bonum feratur, does not hesitate a moment, finding no ground in reason or authority to render the affirmative in the least degree disputable:  “In quaestione ergo proposita" (says he) “nulla est inter authores controversia; sed omnium commune est axioma de substantia et ratione legis esse, ut pro communi bono feratur; ita ut propter illud praecipue tradatur”; having observed in another place, “Contra omnem rectitudinem est bonum commune ad privatum ordinare, seu totum ad partem propter ipsum referre.”  Partiality and law are contradictory terms.  Neither the merits nor the ill deserts, neither the wealth and importance nor the indigence and obscurity, of the one part or of the other, can make any alteration in this fundamental truth.  On any other scheme, I defy any man living to settle a correct standard which may discriminate between equitable rule and the most direct tyranny.  For if we can once prevail upon ourselves to depart from the strictness and integrity of this principle in favor even of a considerable party, the argument will hold for one that is less so; and thus we shall go on, narrowing the bottom of public right, until step by step we arrive, though after no very long or very forced deduction, at what one of our poets calls the enormous faith,—­the faith of the many, created for the advantage of a single person.  I cannot see a glimmering of distinction to evade it; nor is it possible to allege any reason for the proscription of so large a part of the kingdom, which would not hold equally to support, under parallel circumstances, the proscription of the whole.

I am sensible that these principles, in their abstract light, will not be very strenuously opposed.  Reason is never inconvenient, but when it comes to be applied.  Mere general truths interfere very little with the passions.  They can, until they are roused by a troublesome application, rest in great tranquillity, side by side with tempers and proceedings the most directly opposite to them.  Men want to be reminded, who do not want to be taught; because those original ideas of rectitude, to which the mind is compelled to assent when they are proposed, are not always as present to it as they ought to be.  When people are gone, if not into a denial, at least into a sort of oblivion of those ideas, when they know them only as barren speculations, and not as practical motives for conduct, it will be proper to press, as well as to offer them to the understanding; and when one is attacked by prejudices which aim to intrude themselves into the place of law, what is left for us but to vouch and call to warranty those principles