Even in societies which are established on principles the most immoral and the most destructive to the interests of the general society there are required certain rules which a species of false honour as well as private interest engages the members to observe. Robbers and pirates, it has often been remarked, could not maintain their pernicious confederacy did they not establish a new distributive justice among themselves and recall those laws of equity which they have violated with the rest of mankind.
“I hate a drinking companion,” says the Greek proverb, “who never forgets.” The follies of the last debauch should be buried in eternal oblivion, in order to give full scope to the follies of the next.
Among nations where an immoral gallantry, if covered with a thin veil of mystery, is in some degree authorized by custom, there immediately arise a set of rules calculated for the conveniency of that attachment. The famous court or parliament of love in Provence decided formerly all difficult cases of this nature.
In societies for play there are laws required for the conduct of the game, and these laws are different in each game. The foundation, I own, of such societies is frivolous, and the laws are in a great measure, though not altogether, capricious and arbitrary. So far is there a material difference between them and the rules of justice, fidelity and loyalty. The general societies of men are absolutely requisite for the subsistence of the species, and the public conveniency, which regulates morals, is inviolably established in the nature of man and of the world in which he lives. The {p252} comparison, therefore, in these respects is very imperfect. We may only learn from it the necessity of rules wherever men have any intercourse with each other.
They cannot even pass each other on the road without rules. Waggoners, coachmen, and postilions have principles by which they give way, and