schoolmaster, sub-distinguished as an XY schoolmaster, is adjudged to come within the meaning of the law. But scarcely is this sub-variety disposed of, than up rises some decomplex case, which is a sub-variety of this sub-variety: and so on for ever.

Hence, therefore, we may see the shortsightedness of Paley in quoting with approbation, and as if it implied a reproach, that the Mussulman religious code contains "not less than seventy-five thousand traditional precepts." True: but if this statement shows an excess of circumstantiality in the moral systems of Mussulmans, that result expresses a fact which Paley overlooks-viz. that their moral code is in reality their legal code. It is by aggregation of cases, by the everlasting depullulation of fresh sprouts and shoots from old boughs, that this enormous accumulation takes place: and, therefore, the apparent anomaly is exactly paralleled in our unmanageable superstructure of law, and in the French supplements to their code, which have already far overbuilt the code itself. If names were disre. garded, we and the Mahometans are in the very same circumstances.

Casuistry, therefore, is the science of cases, or of those special varieties which are for ever changing the face of actions as contemplated in general rules. The tendency of such variations is, in all states of complex civilisation, to absolute infinity. It is our present purpose to state a few of such cases, in order to fix attention upon the interest and the importance which surround them. No modern book of ethics can be worth notice, unless in so far as it selects and argues the more prominent of such cases, as they offer themselves in the economy of daily life. For we repeat-that the name, the word casuistry, may be evaded,

but the thing cannot: nor is it evaded in our daily conversations.

I. The Case of the Jaffa Massacre. - No case in the whole compass of casuistry has been so much argued to and fro-none has been argued with so little profit; for, in fact, the main elements of the moral decision have been left out of view. Let us state the circumstances: - On the 11th of February 1799, Napoleon, then and for seven months before in military possession of Egypt, began his march towards Syria. His object was to break the force of any Turkish invasion, by taking it in fractions. It had become notorious to every person in Egypt, that the Porte rejected the French pretence of having come for the purpose of quelling Mameluke rebellion-the absurdity of which, apart from its ludicrous Quixotism, was evident in the most practical way, viz. by the fact, that the whole revenues of Egypt were more than swallowed up by the pay and maintenance of the French army. What could the Mamelukes have done worse? Hence it had become certain that the Turks would send an expedition to Egypt; and Napoleon, viewing the garrisons in Syria as the advanced guard of such an expedition, saw the best chance for general victory in meeting those troops beforehand, and destroying them in detail. About nineteen days brought him within view of the Syrian fields. On the last day of February he slept at the Arimathea of the Gospel. In a day or two after his army was before Jaffa, (the Joppa of the Crusaders.) - a weak place, but of some military interest,† from the accident of being the very first fortified town to those entering Palestine from the side of Egypt. On the 4th of March this place was invested; on the 6th, barely forty-eight hours after, it was taken by storm. This fact is in itself important; because it puts an end to the pretence so often brought forward, that the French army had been irritated by a long resistance. Yet, supposing the fact to have been so, how often in the history of war must every reader have met with cases where honourable terms were granted to an enemy merely on account of his obstinate resistance? But then here, it is said, the resistance was wilfully pushed to the arbitration of a storm. Even that might be otherwise stated; but, suppose it true, a storm in military law confers some rights upon the assailants which else they would not have had rights, however, which cease with the day of storming. Nobody denies that the French army might have massacred all whom they met in arms at the time and during the agony of storming. But the question is, Whether a resistance of fortyeight hours could create the right, or in the least degree palliate the atrocity, of putting prisoners to death in cold blood? Four days after the storming, when all things had settled back into the quiet routine of ordinary life, men going about their affairs as usual, confidence restored, and, above all things, after the faith of a Christian army had been pledged to these prisoners that not a hair of their heads should be touched, the imagination is appalled by this wholesale butchery-even the apologists of Napoleon are shocked by the amount of murder, though justifying its principle. They admit that there were two divisions of the prisoners one of fifteen hundred, the other of two thousand five hundred. Their combined amount is equal to a little army; in fact, just about that army with which we fought and won the battle of Maida in Calabria. They composed a force equal to about six • English regiments of infantry on the common establishment. Every man of these 4000 soldiers, chiefly brave Albanians-every man of this little army was basely, brutally, in the very spirit of abject poltroonery, murdered

-murdered as foully as the infants of Bethlehem; resistance being quite hopeless, not only because they had surrendered their arms, but also be. cause, in reliance on Christian honour, they had quietly submitted to have their hands contined with ropes behind their backs. If this blood did not lie heavy on Napoleon's heart in his dying hours, it must have been because a conscience originally callous had been seared by the very number of his atrocities.

Now, having stated the case, let us review the casuistical apologies put forward. What was to be done with these prisoners? There lay the difficulty. Could they be retained according to the common usage with regard to prisoners? No; for there was a scarcity of provisions, barely sufficient for the French army itself. Could they be transported to Egypt by sea? No3; for two English line-of-battle ships, the Theseus and the Tiger, were cruising in the offing, and watching the interjacent seas of Egypt and Syria. Could they be transported to Egypt by land? No3; for it was not possible to spare a sufficient escort; besides, this plan would have included the separate difficulty as to food. Finally, then, as the sole resource left, could they be turned adrift? No; for this, was but another mode of saying, "Let us fight the matter over again; reinstate yourselves as our enemies; let us leave Jaffa re infectâ, and let all begin again denovo" - since, assuredly, say the French apologists, in a fortnight from that date, the prisoners would have been found swelling the ranks of those Turkish forces whom Napoleon had reason to expect in front.

Before we take one step in replying to these arguments, let us cite two parallel cases from history: they are interesting for themselves, and they show how other armies, not Christian, have treated the selfsame difficulty in practice. The first shall be a leaf taken from the great book of Pagan experience; the second from Mahometan: and both were cases in which the parties called on to cut the knot had been irritated to madness by the parties lying at their disposal.

1. The Pagan Decision. In that Jewish war of more than three years' duration, which terminated in the de. struction of Jerusalem, two cities on the lake of Gennesaret were besieged by Vespasian.. One of these was Tiberias: the other Tariche. Both had been defended with desperation; and from their peculiar situation upon water, and amongst profound precipices, the Roman battering apparatus had not been found applicable to their walls. Consequently the resistance and the loss to the Romans had been unexampled. At the latter siege Vespasian was present in person. Six thousand five hundred had perished of the enemy. A number of prisoners remained, amounting to about 40,000. What was to be done with them? A great council was held, at which the commander-in-chief presided, assisted (as Napoleon) by his whole staff. Many of the officers were strongly for having the whole put to death: they used the very arguments of the French --"that, being people now destitute of habitations, they would infallibly urge any cities which received them into a war:" fighting, in fact, henceforward upon a double impulse-viz. the original one of insurrection, and a new one of revenge. Vespasian was sensible of all this; and he himself remarked, that, if they had any indulgence of flight conceded, they would assuredly use it against the authors of that indulgence. But still, as an answer to all objections, he insisted on the solitary fact, that he had pledged the Roman faith for the security of their lives; "and to offer violence, after he had given them his right hand, was what he could not bear to think of." Such are the simple words of Josephus. In the end, overpowered by his council, Vespasian made a sort of compromise. Twelve hundred, as persons who could not have faced the hardships of captivity and travel, he gave up to the sword. Six thousand select young men were transported as labourers into Greece, with a view to Nero's scheme, then in agitation, for cutting through the isthmus of Corinth; the main body, amounting to thirty thousand, were sold for slaves; and all the rest, who happened to be subjects of Agrippa, as a mark of cour

tesy to that prince, were placed at his disposal. Now, in this case, it will be alleged that perhaps the main feature of Napoleon's case was not realized, viz. the want of provisions. Every Roman soldier carried on his shoulders a load of seventeen days' provision, expressly in preparation for such dilemmas; and Palestine was then rank with population, gathered into towns. This objection will be noticed immediately: but, meantime, let it be remembered that the prisoners personally appeared before their conquerors in far worse circumstances than the garrison of Jaffa, except as to the one circumstance (in which both parties stood on equal ground) of having had their lives guaranteed. For the prisoners of Gennesaret were chiefly aliens and fugitives from justice, who had no national or local interest in the cities which they had tempted or forced into insurrection; they were clothed with no military character whatever; in short, they were pure vagrant incendiaries. And the populous condition of Palestine availed little towards the execution of Vespasian's sentence: nobody in that land would have bought such prisoners: nor, if they would, were there any means available, in the agitated state of the Jewish people, for maintaining their purchase. It would, therefore, be necessary to escort them to Cæsarea, as the nearest Roman port for shipping them: thence perhaps to Alexandria, in order to benefit by the corn vessels: and from Alexandria the voyage to remoter places would be pursued at great cost and labour-all so many objections exactly corresponding to those of Napoleon, and yet all overruled by the single consideration of a Roman (viz. a Pagan) right hand pledged to the fulfilment of a promise. As to the twelve hundred old and helpless people massacred in cold blood, as regarded themselves it was a merciful doom, and one which many of the Jerusalem captives afterwards eagerly courted. But still it was a shocking case. It was felt to be so by many Romans themselves: Vespasian was overruled in that instance: and the horror which settled upon the mind of Titus, his elder son, from that very case amongst others, made him tender of human life, and anxiously merciful, through the great tragedies which were now beginning to unroll themselves.

2. The Mahometan Decision. The Emperor Charles V., at different periods, twice invaded the piratical states in the north of Africa. The last of these invasions, directed against Algiers, failed miserably, covering the Emperor with shame, and strewing both land and sea with the wrecks of his great armament. But six years before, he had conducted a most splendid and successful expedition against Tunis, then occupied by Heyradin Barbarossa, a valiant corsair and a prosperous usurper. Barbarossa had an irregular force of fifty thousand men; the Emperor had a veteran army, but not acclimatized, and not much above one-half as numerous. Things tended, therefore, strongly to an equilibrium. Such were the circumstances such was the position on each side: Barbarossa, with his usual adventurous courage, was drawing out of Tunis in order to fight the invader: precisely at that moment occurred the question of what should be done with the Christian slaves. A stronger case cannot be imagined: they were ten thousand fighting men; and the more horrible it seemed to murder so many defenceless people, the more dreadfully did the danger strike upon the imagination. It was their number which appalled the conscience of those who speculated on their murder; but precisely that it was, when pressed upon the recollection, which appalled the prudence of their Moorish masters. Barbarossa himself, familiar with bloody actions, never hesitated about the proper course: "massacre without mercy" was his proposal. But his officers thought otherwise: they were brave men; "and," says Robertson, "they all approved warmly of his intention to fight. But, inured as they were to scenes of bloodshed, the barbarity of his proposal filled them with horror; and Barbarossa, from the dread of irritating them, consented to spare the lives of the slaves." Now, in this case, the penalty attached to mercy, in case it should turn out unhappily for those who so nobly determined to stand the risk, cannot be more tragically expressed, than by saying that it did turn out unhappily. We need not doubt that the merciful officers were otherwise rewarded; but for this world and the successes of this world the ruin was total. Barbarossa was defeated in the battle which ensued:

flying pell-mell to Tunis with the wrecks of his army, he found these very ten thousand Christians in possession of the fort and town: they turned his own artillery upon himself: and his overthrow was sealed by that one act of mercy-so unwelcome from the very first to his own Napoleonish temper.

Thus we see how this very case of Jaffa had been settled by Pagan and Mahometan casuists, where courage and generosity happened to be habitually prevalent. Now, turningback to the pseudo-Christian army, let us very briefly review the arguments for them. First, there were no provisions. But how happened that? or how is it proved? Feeding the prisoners from the 6th to the 10th inclusively of March, proves that there was no instant want. And how was it, then, that Napoleon had run his calculations so narrowly? The prisoners were just 33 per cent on the total French army, as originally detached from Cairo. Some had already perished of that army; and in a few weeksmore, onehalf of that army had perished, or 6000 men, whose rations were hourly becoming disposable for the prisoners. Secondly, a most important point, resources must have been found in Jaffa. But thirdly, if not, if Jaffa were so ill provisioned, how had it ever dreamed of standing a siege? And knowing its condition, as Napoleon must have done from deserters and otherwise, how came he to adopt so needless a measure as that of storming the place? Three days must have compelled it to surrender upon any terms, if it could be really true that, after losing vast numbers of its population in the assault, (for it was the bloodshed of the assault which originally suggested the interference of the aides-de-camp,) Jaffa was not able to allow half rations even to a part of its garrison for a few weeks. What was it meant that the whole should have done, had Napoleon simply blockaded it? Through all these contradictions we see the truth looming as from behind a mist: it was not because provisions failed that Napoleon butchered 4000 young men in cold blood; it was because he wished to signalize his entrance into Palestine by a sanguinary act, such as might strike terror far and wide, resound through Syria as well as Egypt, and paralyse the nerves of his enemies. Fourthly, it is urged that, if he had turned the prisoners loose, they would have faced him again in his next battle. How so? Prisoners without arms? But then, perhaps, they could have retreated upon Acre, where it is known that Djezzar the Turkish pacha had a great magazine of arms. That might have been dangerous, if any such retreat had been open. But surely the French army, itself under orders for Acre, could at least have intercepted the Acre route from the prisoners. No other remained but that through the defiles of Naplous. In this direction, however, there was no want of men. Beyond the mountains cavalry only were in use: and the prisoners had no horses, nor habits of acting as cavalry. In the defiles it was riflemen who were wanted, and the prisoners had no rifles; besides that, the line of the French operations never came near to that route. Then, again, if provisions were so scarce, how were the unarmed prisoners to obtain them on the simple allegation that they had fought unsuccessfully against the French?

But, finally, one conclusive argument there is against this damnable atrocity of Napoleon's, which in all future Lives of Napoleon one may expect to see noticed, viz, that if the circumstances of Palestine were such as to forbid the ordinary usages of war, if (which we are far from believing) want of provisions made it indispensable to murder prisoners in cold blood-in that case a Syrian war became impossible to a man of honour; and the guilt commences from a higher point than Jaffa. Already at Cairo, and in the elder stages of the expedition, planned in face of such afflicting necessities, we read the counsels of a murderer; of one rightly carrying such a style of warfare towards the ancient country of the assassins; of one not an apostate merely from Christian humanity, but from the lowest standard of soldierly honour. He and his friends abuse Sir Hudson Lowe as a jailer. But far better to be a jailer, and faithful to one's trust, than to be the cut-throat of unarmed

men.

One consideration remains, which we reserve to the end; because it has been universally overlooked, and because it is conclusive against Napoleon, even on his own hypothesis of an absolute necessity. In Vespasian's case it does not appear that he had

gained any thing for himself or for his army by his promise of safety to the enemy: he had simply gratified his own feelings by holding out prospects of final escape. But Napoleon had absolutely seduced the 4000 men from a situation of power, from van. tage-ground, by his treacherous promise. And when the French apologists plead-" If we had dismissed the prisoners, we should soon have had to fight the battle over again"they totally forget the state of the facts: they had not fought the battle at all: they had evaded the battle as to these prisoners: as many enemies as could have faced them de novo, so many had they bought off from fighting. Forty centuries of armed men, brave and despairing, and firing from windows, must have made prodigious havoc: and this havoc the French evaded by a trick, by a perfidy, perhaps unexampled in the annals of military man.

II. Piracy. It is interesting to trace the revolutions of moral feeling. In the early stages of history we find piracy in high esteem. Thucydides tells us that λησεια or robbery, when conducted at sea, (i. e. robbery on non-Grecian people,) was held in the greatest honour by his countrymen in elder ages. And this, in fact, is the true station, this point of feeling for primitive man, from which we ought to view the robberies and larcenies of savages. Captain Cook, though a good and often a wise man, erred in this point. He took a plain Old Bailey view of the case; and very sincerely believed (as all sea-captains ever have done,) that a savage must be a bad man who would purloin any thing that was not his. Yet it is evident that the poor child of uncultured nature, who saw strangers descending as it were from the moon upon his aboriginal forests and lawns, must have viewed them under the same angle as the Greeks of old. They were no part of any system to which he belonged; and why should he not plunder them? By force if he could: but, where that was out of the question, why should he not take the same credit for an undetected theft that the Spartan gloried in taking? To be detected was both shame and loss; but he was certainly entitled to any glory which might seem to settle upon success, not at all less than the more pretending citizen of Sparta. Besides