in ordinary cases, is a declaration of promise, some intention to be put in execution; but in morals is defined, a solemn affirmation by which one pledges his veracity that he shall perform, or cause to be performed, the thing which he mentions.

As such a declaration excites expectations in the minds of those to whom it is made; and as to frustrate these expectations might rouse indignation, and be followed by consequences injurious to the person, the character, or interest, of him who made it—it becomes a matter of prudence in the promiser to keep his word. And farther, as a certain degree of confidence is found necessary to the very existence of civil society, and as others may have acted on the faith of his promise, it is now not a matter of prudence only to keep his word—it is a duty which he owes to all who have spent their time, their money, or their labour, in consequence of those expectations which he has warranted them to entertain.

It, then, being consonant to sound reason, necessary to the existence of civil society, and in general the interest of both the promiser and promisee, that the words of the promise should be fulfilled, it has become a maxim in morals that a man is obliged to perform his promise.

In many instances, the great difficulty concerning a interpretation of a promise is, how to explain it; for although the grounds of its obligation be those expectations which it has sometimes raised, a question will occur, Is the promiser bound to difficult... answer fully all the expectations to which the different constructions of his words may have given birth? Should I, for instance, define a man to run with a letter to such a place, and engage to satisfy him upon his return; and if on his return I gave him double of the usual hire in like cases; but if he be not satisfied with less than the triple of such a sum, am I obliged to grant his demands? This will lead us to consider the rules by which a promise should be interpreted.

If a promise were always to be deemed obligatory in the sense in which the promisor receives it, a man would not know what he had promised; the promisor, or promissee from a difference of views, associations, and interests, ought to be might conceive a sense of which the promiser had never dreamed; might suppose engagements which were never intended, which could not be foreseen, and, although foreseen, could not be performed. For these reasons it is natural to think that the sense of the promiser should rather direct the interpretation. He knows precisely what it is he has undertaken, and is unquestionably the best judge of what meaning he affixed to his words. His explanation should therefore be admitted, if information alone could give him a title to decide in the affair.

But something more than mere information, or a knowledge of the cause, is expected from a judge, as integrity is equally essential to his character. Doubts may arise when the words will admit of various meanings, whether the promiser will be so candid as impartially to own the precise meaning which he had actually annexed to his expressions: At any rate, if he wished to deceive, he might purposely use an ambiguous phraseology, and perform the promise in a sense of his own without satisfying the reasonable hopes of the promissee.

When the daughter of Tarpeius bargained with Tatius to betray the citadel for what he and his Sabines wore on their left hands, meaning their rings and their golden bracelets, Tatius probably performed his promise in the way which he intended, when he caused her to be buried under their shields, which they carried also on their left hands. But who will say that here was not treachery and a dishonourable abuse of that confidence which had been reposed in him?

It must therefore be obvious, that the import of a promise, where its meaning is disputed, is not to be determined by the sense of the promiser nor by the expectations of the promissee; and if it was said that the obligation of a promise arose from those expectations which had been raised by it, the assertion now must be limited to those expectations which were intentionally raised by the promiser, or those which to his knowledge the promissee was induced to entertain in consequence of that declaration which had been made to him. Should there still be a doubt about what expectations were intentionally raised, and what should have been reasonably entertained, recourse must be had to the judgment of those who are allowed to be persons of candour, and who are acquainted with the characters of the men, and with those circumstances in which the promise was made.

The following are some of the cases in which a promise is not binding. As the obligation to perform the promise arises from those expectations which are intentionally raised by the promiser; it is plain that no promise can be binding before acceptance, before the promise has been communicated to the promissee, and before he has entertained hopes of its performance. The promise is similar where a promise is released, that is, where the performance is dispensed with by the promissee, and where he entertains no expectations on account of any thing that the promiser has said to him. Should a third person entertain hopes on account of the promise, the promiser is to cherish these hopes at his own hazard, having no encouragement from the promiser to do so: yet if this person has been warranted to hope by the promissee, the promissee has renounced his privilege of releasing the promise, and along with the promiser becomes bound for its performance.

A promise is not binding where the performance is unlawful; and the performance is unlawful where it is contrary to former promises, or to any moral and religious precept, which from the beginning to the end of time is of perpetual and unalterable obligation. Thus no man is bound by his promise to give to me what he has already promised to another; and no man is bound by his promise to blaspheme God, to commit murder, or to criminate the innocent. Such promises are unlawfully made, and cannot be otherwise than unlawfully performed.

Some have even carried their scruples so far as to doubt, whether any promise, unlawfully made, can be lawfully performed. Should a man, during the lifetime of his wife, happen to promise marriage to another, such a man (they say) by the Christian religion has already committed adultery in his heart; and should he afterwards become a widower, he is not bound, and he even ought not, to fulfil his engagements, as this would be putting his criminal intention into execution. This species of reasoning, we must confess, is to us unintelligible. — As the wife is dead, what now should prevent the man from marrying the object of his affections? Why, say the cavilers, he already is under a promise to marry her, and his promise was made at a time when it should not have been made. It is true, the performance, considered by itself, is opposed by no law human or divine; but then it originated in what was wrong; and however much the Supreme Being and the bulk of the creation may be out of the secret, we have discovered by the ingenious logic of cavillers, that evil can never spring out of good, nor good out of evil; but that the means and the end, the motive and the action are always of the same complexion in morals.

When a promise is made, the particular circumstances in which it is to be deemed obligatory are sometimes mentioned. "I promise (for instance) to lend my friend 200 pounds within three days, provided a certain creditor which I name do not make a demand on me before that time. In other cases no circumstance is foreseen by the promiser to prevent the fulfilling of his engagement; and hence we have erroneous promises, which proceed on the supposition that things are true, possible, and lawful, which are not so. An erroneous promise, which proceeds on the false representation of the promissee, is not binding.

A London gentleman lately purchased an estate in the south of England at a public sale, believing the description which he saw in the newspapers, and which likewise was given by the auctioneer, to be true; but finding afterwards that the estate nowise corresponded to the description, the law freed him from his engagement, because the seller had evidently been guilty of PROJECTION of the SPHERE.

Plate CCCCXXII.

Fig. 39.

Fig. 40.

Fig. 41.

Fig. 42.

Fig. 43.

Fig. 44.

Fig. 45.

Fig. 46.

Fig. 47.

NB. In the text p. 379, Prop. VII. O & o should always be as in the figure.

A. Bell. Print. Wal. Sculpt. fecit. A promise not binding when the performance is impossible.

An erroneous promise, whose performance is impossible, is not binding. Before the conclusion of the late war a planter of Tobago promised to send to his friend in England 12 hogsheads of sugar from the next year's produce of his estate; but before that time Tobago fell into the hands of the French, and the West Indian found it impossible to answer the expectations of his friend in England.

An erroneous promise, whose performance is unlawful, or, to speak more precisely, whose performance is contrary to a prior promise, or to any moral or religious obligation, is not binding. A father believing the accounts from abroad of his son's death, soon after bequeathed his fortune to his nephew; but the son, the report of whose death had been false, returns home, and the father is released from the promise to his nephew, because it was contrary to a prior promise, which he had tacitly come under to his son. This prior promise was implied in the whole of the father's conduct, and was expressed in signs as emphatic and as unequivocal as those of language. It had all the effect too of the most solemn promise on the son, who, to his father's knowledge, was induced in consequence of this promise to entertain the most sanguine hopes of succeeding to his father, if he survived. The world likewise could bear testimony that these expectations were not rashly cherished. He was brought into existence by means of his father, who was thereby understood to love him affectionately; he was ushered into society as the representative of his family, and was therefore supposed to be the heir of its wealth. Religion itself supported his pretensions, pronouncing the father worse than an infidel who neglects to show that attention to his children which the world naturally expects from a parent.—That the father's promise was not released from the mere circumstance that the mistake was known to his nephew the promisee, will appear plain from the following circumstances. Suppose the father a landed proprietor, that the lease of one of his farms has expired, and that he has long been expecting to let it at £200; suppose that this sum is refused, and that he agrees with the present tenant to grant a new lease at £150—the obligation here to perform his promise is not dissolved by an after offer of £200, though the tenant knew that £200 had been expected, and that only from despairing of that sum his landlord had granted the new lease at £150: the promise is binding, because the performance is every way lawful, contrary to no prior engagement, and opposed to no principle in morals. The law of the land, were the proprietor reluctant, would enforce the obligation, and exact obedience in the tone of authority; because breaches of faith, were they permitted in such cases, would destroy all confidence, and annihilate the bonds of social union:

Men live and prosper but in mutual trust; A confidence of one another's truth. Oroonoko.

The great difficulty which many have to encounter in determining when erroneous promises ought or ought not to be kept, arises from their proceeding on a principle of whose consequences they do not seem to be always aware. There is seldom, they perceive, a virtuous action that is not attended with some happy effects; and it will, perhaps, be generally allowed, that the comparative merit of similar virtues may safely be estimated by their utility: But to make utility, as some do, the criterion of virtue, and pronounce an action vicious or virtuous merely on account of those consequences which they see may flow from it, is a dangerous maxim. Evil has often sprung out of good, and good out of evil; and good and evil have frequently sprung from the same action.

In Mandeville's Hive,

That root of evil Avarice, That damn'd ill-natur'd baneful vice, Was slave to Prodigality, That noble sin; whilst Luxury Employ'd a million of the poor, And odious Pride a million more. Envy itself and Vanity Were ministers of Industry: That darling folly, Fickleness, In diet, furniture, and dress, That strange ridiculous vice, was made The very wheel that turn'd the trade.

The description here is not altogether false; and these indeed may be some of the consequences that flow from avarice, luxury, pride, vanity, and envy: but these are not all.—To see at once all the consequences that spring from an action, the good and the bad, the particular and general, the immediate and remote, would require sometimes the foresight of Omniscience, and at all times a knowledge superior to what is human. In the Fable of the Bees, the author's object was to show that private vices are public benefits; and he therefore was naturally led by his argument to consider only such consequences of vice as favoured his hypothesis. He wanted candour. And that artifice which runs through his Fable happens to remind us, that while the remote and the general effects of an action may not be seen, the particular and immediate, which fall within our notice, are apt to be viewed through the medium of passion, interest, or opinion. For these reasons, it appears surprising how any person should ever imagine that the obligation to perform a promise should depend entirely upon the ideas which the promiser apprehended of its utility.

The best refutation of such an opinion are the singular conclusions to which it leads.

A late writer on political justice, who appears to have embraced it, gets into reasoning not very common. In a part of his system he looks on morals as an article of trade: virtue and vice, in his Chapter of Promises, are distinguished but antiquated terms for profit and loss; and right and wrong are used to express what is beneficial and what is hurtful, in his apprehension, to himself and the community.—With respect to veracity, those "rational and intelligent beings," by whom he wishes the affairs of the world to be carried on, may, while they act as rational and intelligent, break or perform their promises at pleasure. He thinks it "essential to various circumstances of human intercourse, that we should be known to bestow a steady attention upon the quantities of convenience or inconvenience, of good or evil, that might arise to others from our conduct." After this attention, the disappointment of the promisee is not to be minded, Promised, though the expectations excited by these "rational and intelligent beings" may have "altered the nature of his situation, and engaged him in undertakings from which he would otherwise have abstained." What the promiser takes to be the general utility and the fitness of things is to be his guide. And a breach of promise will be attended with the following advantages: "The promisee, and all other men, will be taught to depend more upon their own exertions, and less upon the assistance of others, which caprice may refuse or justice withhold. He and all others will be taught to acquire such merit, and to engage in such pursuits, as shall oblige any honest man to come to their succour if they should stand in need of assistance." This breach of promise, with a view to the general utility, will, so far from being criminal, form a part of that resolute execution of justice which would in a thousand ways increase the independence, the energies, and the virtue of mankind.*

Inquiry concerning Political Justice, book 3, ch. 3.

A private individual has no right to intrude his schemes of utility on the public.

Such are the views which determined this author to consider "the validity of promises" as "inconsistent with justice," and as "foreign to general good." From one, however, who relies with too much confidence on the promiser, it would be certainly desirable to know, whether the person, who violates his faith for the public utility, is always to be candid. Where breach of faith promotes his own interest, ought he alone to decide on the validity of his promise? or where promises are broken for the general good, is he to be guided by his own visionary schemes of utility? Is he to act as trustee for the public without any delegated power? and shall the community submit to his decisions without so much as putting the question, Who hath made thee a ruler over us? When a writer thus deviates so far from the path of reason, it is natural to ask, what was the ignis fatuus that misled him? In the present case it is pretty obvious. Being something of opinion with

* See Note, the celebrated Turgot*, that romances are the only books in which moral principles are treated in an impartial manner, this gentleman, in his Chapter of Promises, seems to have borrowed a part of his morality from the doggerels of Butler; and having adopted, though from different motives, the political principles of Sir Hudibras's squire, that obedience to civil government is not due because it is promised, he has come to exactly the same conclusion with respect to the obligation of keeping one's word. But Ralph has reasoned with more ingenuity; and has shown not only that the public good, but the glory of the Lord, may be sometimes promoted by a breach of faith.

The saints, * whom oaths and vows oblige, Know little of their privilege; Farther, I mean, than carrying on Some self-advantage of their own: For if the devil, to serve his turn, Can tell truth, why the saints should scorn, When it serves theirs, to swear and lie, I think there's little reason why: Else he has a greater pow'r than they, Which 'twere impiety to say: W' are not commanded to forbear, Indefinitely, at all to swear;

But to swear idly, and in vain, Without self-interest and gain; For breaking of an oath and lying Is but a kind of self-denying, A faint-like virtue; and from hence Some have broke oaths by Providence: Some, to the glory of the Lord, Perjur'd themselves and broke their word: For saints may do the same thing by The spirit, in sincerity, Which other men are tempted to, And at the devil's instance do.

Hudibras, Cant. II.

Here are new views of utility; which, were they to be considered as of any weight, would increase the difficulty of determining when an erroneous promise ought to be kept.

But should views of utility be laid aside, and should it be made an invariable rule that truth is on no account to be violated, that deceit is never to be practised, and that moral obligations are not to be dissolved for the prospect of any physical advantage; those doubts which arise concerning the validity of erroneous promises will soon disappear. Disagreeable perhaps and ridiculous consequences may sometimes arise to a few individuals from an honest and conscientious adherence to their promise; but will any affect that the general good, that burden of the soul, will ever be endangered by too much veracity?

So numerous inconveniences arise daily from the regular operation of those great physical laws, which are under the immediate direction of Providence, that those philosophers who have adopted the principle of utility, and are much surprised to see the universe so awkwardly planned for the ease and comfort of them and their species, have been under the necessity of imputing many events in nature to the malignity of some evil independent being; or of allowing that things have degenerated since they first came from the hands of the Creator, and that they must now be exceedingly altered from what they had been when He chose to pronounce them all very good. Thus, absurdity or impiety must always be the consequence of judging of the vice and virtue of an action by its utility, and of estimating its utility by our limited views and erroneous conceptions.

As for extorted promises, it is curious to observe how this question should always be started, whether or not they ought to be kept? and another question should seldom be thought of, whether or not they ought to be made? Fortitude was one of the cardinal virtues among the ancients; and is deemed of such importance in the Christian system, that the fearful are clasped with the unbelievers, and are thought unworthy of the favour of Deity, as being incapable of supporting those trials to which heaven exposes the faithful as the truest test of Christian virtue.—If a person should want the necessary fortitude to be virtuous, it will be a poor excuse for his baseness, that he has added deceit to his guilt, cowardice; and surely it is not the business of morality, when it has found him guilty of one crime, to grant him a dispensation for committing two. The laws of jurisprudence, it will readily be allowed, cannot favour the claims of the promisee; because they ought never to to lend their support to oppression and violence. But their acquittal, should he violate his faith, will by no means vindicate the character of the promiser. Their acquitting a woman from the charge of adultery, goes a short way in restoring the fair reputation of her innocence.

Let jurisprudence decide as it will, the man of honour and the generous patriot can never be brought to respect the person who, struck with a panic, could betray either himself or his friends. The magnanimous spirits who could die for the truth will view with contempt his pitiful deceit. Those unfortunate men who may suffer from that very distrust which the breach of his faith has begotten, will always detest him as a traitor and enemy; and heaven itself cannot be supposed to reward that foldero who deserts his cause, and relinquishes the post which he has assigned him, at the sight of danger.

If we once begin to accommodate morality to the dispositions and humours of mankind, it is hard to say where this species of complaisance will end. The degrees of timidity are so various, and some tempers by nature so yielding, that repeated importunity or an earnest request will extort a promise.

A young lady was frequently pressed by her dying husband to grant him a promise that she would not marry after his death. For some time she was able to resist with becoming spirit his absurd request; but upon his declaring oftener than once that he could not otherwise die in peace, she complied and promised. Too young, however, for this effort of continence, she afterwards listened to the addresses of a second lover, and found her heart insensibly engaged before she adverted to the impropriety of a new attachment. But proposals of marriage could scarcely fail to remind her of her promise and awaken her scruples. These she soon communicated to her lover, with her firm resolution to remain a widow, if the contrary measure, which she greatly preferred, and on which her earthly happiness depended, were not approved by some spiritual counsellor.

Upon this declaration it was agreed to take the advice of their own minister, who was an eminent dissenting clergyman in the diocese of Oxford; but this gentleman, unwilling to decide in a matter of such importance, proposed to refer it to Dr. Secker, who was then bishop of that see. This prelate too declined to give any judgment in the case; but, as was his way, muttered up a number of arguments on each side of the question, and committed them to a letter, which a learned gentleman of our acquaintance had some time ago an opportunity of seeing in manuscript.

If the sentiments to which the bishop was inclined could have been inferred from his statement of arguments, he seemed to think that the promise was binding. In our opinion, he ought to have given a positive decision. It was no matter whether the promise was extorted or not; the promise was made; and the question was now, whether or not was the performance lawful? That it was lawful appears evident. The lady was under a moral obligation to remain a widow; and no moral obligation, so far as we know, required her to marry.

To be fruitful and multiply, indeed, is declared in Scripture, and is found, to the woful experience of many, to be one of the general laws of our nature. But of all those laws intended by nature to regulate the conduct of inferior intelligences, the moral, which were meant to be checks and correctors of those abuses to which the physical are apt to be carried, are certainly the most sacred and obligatory. To procreate his species, a man is not then to be guilty of adultery, nor of fornication, nor to listen to the lewd calls of incontinency. St. Paul's observation, that it is better to marry than burn, cannot be allowed in this instance to have much weight. He has not defined what degree of amorous inflammation constitutes burning, nor in what cases this burning would be a sufficient warrant for marrying. In the present instance he does not even consider marriage as a duty; he compares it with burning, and thinks it only the least of the two evils. Not that marriage is evil of itself; for he that marrieth doth well; but there are circumstances in which it would be inconvenient to marry, and in which he that marrieth not is said to do better. But if those inconveniences be reasons sufficient to deter from marrying, is that person to be held excusable who, in order to gratify an animal passion, somewhat refined, should violate an oath, and trample on a sacred moral obligation?

The young lady might indeed declare that her earthly happiness was at an end if she were not permitted to marry again; but what circumstance prevented her from marrying? It was not the opinion of her own pastor, nor the bishop of Oxford: the truth is, it was certain scruples of her own, which being unable of herself to overcome, she had piously solicited the assistance of others. It is certainly a misfortune that a devotional and amorous turn should always be so closely connected in the females. Both, however, cannot always be indulged. Who will say, that the motive is rational which inclines one to cherish a passion which conscience disapproves? The virtue of continency might indeed have borne hard on this lady's constitution, and in her way to immortal happiness might have formed a gate so strait and narrow as it might be difficult for her to pass through; but after all, her case was not harder than that of nuns, who take the vows of perpetual chastity, and endure sufferings of a similar nature, and in some instances even perhaps greater than hers; yet doing it cheerfully, from the supposition that the Omniscient is well acquainted with the nature of the great sacrifice which they make, and that after death he will study to requite them, and bestow on them something like an equivalent, which in their opinion can scarcely be less than a happiness in heaven as ample as their wishes and as lasting as their souls.

Every promise, therefore, which is not released, nor fraudulently obtained by the promiser, is to be held binding if the performance be lawful and possible.

The Christian cannot, and a man of honour will scarcely venture to reject this maxim, that a good man of a similar ought not to change though he swear to his hurt. Yet nature with a simple promise and a promissory oath are not very different in point of obligation. Most people know, and, where any moral duty is concerned, they ought particularly to reflect, that this world is governed by an Almighty Being, who knows all things, who lives always, and who is just to reward and to punish. The person who makes a promissory oath does it avowedly under an immediate sense of these truths; the person who makes a simple promise, though he certainly ought, yet may not reflect on these at the time. The former, when he violates his oath, exhibits, only to outward appearance, appearance, a greater contempt of the Divine power, knowledge, and justice, than he who violates a simple promise under an impression of the same truths. To Him who knows the secrets of the heart, the breach of the promise must appear as criminal as the breach of the oath. See Assumption and Oath.