| We have now run over the three fundamental laws of nature, that of the stability of possession, of its transference by consent, and of the performance of promises. |
| It is on the strict t observance of those three laws, that the peace and security of human society entirely depend; nor is there any possibility of establishing a good correspondence among men, where these are neglected. |
| Society is absolutely necessary for the well-being of men; and these are as necessary to the support of society. |
| Whatever restraint they may impose on the passions of men, they are the real offspring of those passions, and are only a more artful and more refined way of satisfying them. |
| Nothing is more vigilant and inventive than our passions; and nothing is more obvious, than the convention for the observance of these rules. |
| Nature has, therefore, trusted this affair entirely to the conduct of men, and has not placed in the mind any peculiar original principles, to determine us to a set of actions, into which the other principles of our frame and constitution were sufficient to lead us. |
| And to convince us the more fully of this truth, we may here stop a moment, and from a review of the preceding reasonings may draw some new arguments, to prove that those laws, however necessary, are entirely artificial, and of human invention; and consequently that justice is an artificial, and not a natural virtue. |
| (1) The first argument I shall make use of is derived from the vulgar definition of justice. |
| Justice is commonly defined to be a constant and perpetual will of giving every one his due. |
| In this definition it is supposed, that there are such things as right and property, independent of justice, and antecedent to it; and that they would have subsisted, though men had never dreamt of practising such a virtue. |
| I have already observed, in a cursory manner, the fallacy of this opinion, and shall here continue to open up a little more distinctly my sentiments on that subject. |
| I shall begin with observing, that this quality, which we shall call property, is like many of the imaginary qualities of the peripatetic philosophy, and vanishes upon a more accurate inspection into the subject, when considered a-part from our moral sentiments. |
| It is evident property does not consist in any of the sensible qualities of the object. |
| For these may continue invariably the same, while the property changes. |
| Property, therefore, must consist in some relation of the object. |
| But it is not in its relation with regard to other external and inanimate objects. |
| For these may also continue invariably the same, while the property changes. |
| This quality, therefore, consists in the relations of objects to intelligent and rational beings. |
| But it is not the external and corporeal relation, which forms the essence of property. |
| For that relation may be the same betwixt inanimate objects, or with regard to brute creatures; though in those cases it forms no property. |
| It is, therefore, in some internal relation, that the property consists; that is, in some influence, which the external relations of the object have on the mind and actions. |