[233] Cf. Blackstone, Introduction, § 2. “In relation to those laws which enjoin only positive duties, and forbid only such things as are not mala in se, but mala prohibita merely, without any intermixture of moral guilt, annexing a penalty to non-compliance, here I apprehend conscience is no further concerned, than by directing a submission to the penalty in case of our breach of those laws ... the alternative is offered to every man, ‘either abstain from this or submit to such a penalty.’”
[234] Into the ethical difficulties peculiar to International Law, I have not thought it worth while to enter.
[235] Vows to God constitute another exception: and it is thought by many that if these are binding, there must be some way in which God can be understood to grant release from them. But this it is beyond my province to discuss.
[236] The case is somewhat different when the act has become immoral after the promise was made: still, here also, the prior duty of abstaining from it would be universally held to prevail.
[237] What is here said of a ‘statement’ may be extended to any mode of producing a false impression.
[238] The case where set forms are used being the exceptio probans regulam.
[239] It can hardly be said that the advocate merely reports the false affirmations of others: since the whole force of his pleading depends upon his adopting them and working them up into a view of the case which, for the time at least, he appears to hold.
[240] E.g. certain religious persons hold—or held in 1873—that it is right solemnly to affirm a belief that God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th, meaning that 1 : 6 is the divinely ordered proportion between rest and labour.
[241] Cf. Whewell, Elements of Morality, Book ii. chap. xv. § 299.