An Essay on Professional Ethics | Page 4

force and accuracy by that master of the science,
Bynkershoek; Utilitas, utilitas, justi PROPE mater et æqui: in which

observe that the word prope is emphatic. Legislation for classes
violates this plain rule of equal justice, and moreover does not, in the
long run, benefit those for whom it is intended. The indirect evils upon
society at large are even more injurious than those which are direct.
Men are often thus poor to-day and rich to-morrow. The bubble, while
it dances in the sunbeam, glitters with golden hues, though destined
almost immediately to burst and be seen no more.
What government owes to society, and all it owes, is the impartial
administration of equal and just laws. This produces security of life, of
liberty, and of property. It has become a favorite maxim, that it is the
duty of government to promote the happiness of the people. The phrase
may be interpreted so as to mean well, but it is a very inaccurate and
unhappy one. It is the inalienable right of men to pursue their own
happiness; each man under such restraints of law as will leave every
other man equally free to do the same. The true and only true object of
government is to secure this right. The happiness of the people is the
happiness of the individuals who compose the mass. Speaking now
with reference to those objects only, which human laws can reach and
influence, he is the happy man, who sees his condition in life constantly
and gradually, though it may be slowly, improving. Let government
keep its hands off--do nothing in the way of creating the subject-matter
of speculation--and things naturally fall into this channel. There will be
some speculators, as there will be some gamblers; but they will be few.
The stock market is filled with fancies, which the government has
manufactured and continues to manufacture to order. It is the duty of
government to encourage the accumulation of the savings of industry.
The best way to do so is to guard the strong box from the invasion of
others, and not itself to invade it. Property has an especial claim to
protection against the government itself. The power of taxation in the
legislature is in fact a part of the eminent domain; a power that must
necessarily be reposed in the discretion of every government to furnish
the means of its own existence. One grievous invasion of property--and
of course ultimately of labor, from whose accumulations all property
grows--is by government itself, in the shape of taxation for objects not
necessary for the common defence and general welfare. Men have a
right not only to be well governed, but to be cheaply governed--as

cheaply as is consistent with the due maintenance of that security, for
which society was formed and government instituted. This, the sole
legitimate end and object of law, is never to be lost sight of--security to
men in the free enjoyment and development of their capacities for
happiness--SECURITY--nothing less--but nothing more. To compel
men to contribute of the earnings or accumulations of industry, their
own or inherited, to objects beyond this, not within the legitimate
sphere of legislation, to appropriate the money in the public treasury to
such objects, is a perversion and abuse of the powers of government,
little if anything short of legalized robbery. What is the true province of
legislation, ought to be better understood. It is worth while to remark,
that in every new and amended State constitution, the bill of rights
spreads over a larger space; new as well as more stringent restrictions
are placed upon legislation. There is no danger of this being carried too
far; as Chancellor Kent appears to have apprehended that it might be.
There is not much danger of erring upon the side of too little law. The
world is notoriously too much governed. Legislators almost invariably
aim at accomplishing too much. Representative democracies, so far
from being exempt from this vice, are from their nature peculiarly
liable to it. Annual legislatures--with generally two-thirds new
members every year--increase the evil. The members fall into the
common mistake, that their commission is to act, not to decide in the
first place whether action is necessary. They would be blamed and
ridiculed, if they adjourned without doing something important. Hence
the annual volumes of our Acts of Assembly are fearfully growing in
bulk. It is not merely of the extent of local legislation, the vast
multiplication of charters for every imaginable purpose, or of the
constantly recurring tampering with the most general subjects of
interest, finance, revenue, banking, education, pauperism, &c., that
there is reason to complain; but scarce a session of one of our
legislatures passes without rash and ill-considered alterations in the
civil code, vitally affecting private rights and relations.