"So, in the crime of high treason, the king seized the property, and the children were deprived of it. Naboth having been proceeded against, 'quia maledixerat regi,' King Ahab took possession of his inheritance. David, being apprised that Mephibosheth had taken part in the rebellion, gave all his goods to Sheba, who brought him the news—'Tibi sunt omnia quæ fuerunt Mephibosheth.'"
The question here was, who should inherit the property of Mademoiselle de Canillac—property formerly confiscated from her father, abandoned by the king to a keeper of the royal treasure, and afterwards given by this keeper of the royal treasure to the testatrix. And in this case of a woman of Auvergne a lawyer refers us to that of Ahab, one of the petty kings of a part of Palestine, who confiscated Naboth's vineyard, after assassinating its proprietor with the poniard of Jewish justice—an abominable act, which has become a proverb to inspire men with a horror for usurpation. Assuredly, Naboth's vineyard has no connection with Mademoiselle de Canillac's inheritance. Nor do the murder and confiscation of the goods of Mephibosheth, grandson of King Saul, and son of David's friend Jonathan, bear a much greater affinity to this lady's will.
With this pedantry, this rage for citations foreign to the subject; with this ignorance of the first principles of human nature; with these ill-conceived and ill-adapted prejudices, has jurisprudence been treated on by men who, in their sphere, have had some reputation.
CONSCIENCE.
SECTION I.
Of the Conscience of Good and of Evil.
Locke has demonstrated—if we may use that term in morals and metaphysics—that we have no innate ideas or principles. He was obliged to demonstrate this position at great length, as the contrary was at that time universally believed. It hence clearly follows that it is necessary to instil just ideas and good principles into the mind as soon as it acquires the use of its faculties.
Locke adduces the example of savages, who kill and devour their neighbors without any remorse of conscience; and of Christian soldiers, decently educated, who, on the taking of a city by assault, plunder, slay, and violate, not merely without remorse, but with rapture, honor, and glory, and with the applause of all their comrades.
It is perfectly certain that, in the massacres of St. Bartholomew, and in the "autos-da-fé" the holy acts of faith of the Inquisition, no murderer's conscience ever upbraided him with having massacred men, women, and children, or with the shrieks, faintings, and dying tortures of his miserable victims, whose only crime consisted in keeping Easter in a manner different from that of the inquisitors. It results, therefore, from what has been stated, that we have no other conscience than what is created in us by the spirit of the age, by example, and by our own dispositions and reflections.