Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/476

464 Casuistry. [Oct. teen ounces and one-third: so that, in reality, the L.5 of 1440 was, even as to weight of silver, rather more than L.10 of 1706. 2d, as to the efficacy of L.10 in Henry VI. 's reign: upon reviewing the main items of common household (and therefore of common academic) expenditure, and pursuing this review through bad years and good years, the bishop decides that it is about equal to L.25 or L.30 of Queen Anne's reign. Sir George Shuckburgh has since treated this casuistical problem more elaborately: but Bishop Gibson it was, who, in his Chronicon Preciosum, first broke the ice.

After this, he adds an ingenious question upon the apparently parallel case of a freeholder swearing himself worth 40s. per annum as a qualification for an electoral vote: ought not he to hold himself perjured in voting upon an estate often so much below the original 40s. contemplated by Parliament, for the very same reason that a collegian is not perjured in holding a fellowship, whilst, in fact, he may have four or five times the nominal sum privileged by the founder? The Bishop says no; and he distinguishes the case thus: the college L.5 must always mean a virtual L.5—a L.5 in efficacy, and not merely in name. But the freeholder's 40s. is not so restricted; and for the following reason—that this sum is constantly coming under the review of Parliament. It is clear, therefore, from the fact of not having altered it, that Parliament is satisfied with a merely nominal 40s., and sees no reason to alter it. True, it was a rule enacted by the Parliament of 1430; at which time 40s. was even in weight of silver equal to 80s. of 1706; and in virtue or power of purchasing equal to L.12 at the least. The qualification of a freeholder is, therefore, much lower in Queen Anne's days than in those of Henry VI. But what of that? Parliament, it must be presumed, sees good reasons why it should be lower. And at all events, till the law operates amiss, there can be no reason to alter it.

A case of the same kind with those argued by Bishop Gibson arose often in trials for larceny—we mean as to that enactment which fixed the minimum, for a capital offence. This case is noticed by the Bishop, and juries of late years often took the casuistry into their own hands. They were generally thought to act with no more than a proper humanity to the prisoner; but still people thought such juries incorrect. Whereas, if Bishop Gibson is right, who allows a man to swear positively that he has not L.5 a-year, when nominally he has much more, such juries were even technically right. However, this point is now altered by Sir Robert Peel's reforms. But there are other cases, and especially those which arise not between different times but between different places, which will often require the same kind of casuistry as that which is so ably applied by the good and learned Bishop.

V. Suicide—It seems passing strange that the main argument upon which Pagan moralists relied in their unconditional condemnation of suicide, viz. the supposed analogy of our situation in life to that of a sentinel mounting guard, who cannot, without a capital offence, quit his station until called off by his commanding officer, is dismissed with contempt by a Christian moralist, viz. Paley. But a stranger thing still is—that the only man who ever wrote a book in palliation of suicide, should have been not only a Christian—not only an official minister and dignitary of a metropolitan Christian church but also a scrupulously pious man. We allude, as the reader will suppose, to Dr Donne, dean of St Paul's. His opinion is worthy of consideration. Not that we would willingly diminish, by one hair's weight, the reasons against suicide; but it is never well to rely upon ignorance or inconsideration for the defence of any principle whatever. Donne's notion was, (a notion, however, adopted in his earlier years,) that as we do not instantly pronounce a man a murderer upon hearing that he has killed a fellow-creature, but, according to the circumstances of the case, pronounce his act either murder, or manslaughter, or justifiable homicide; so by parity of reason, suicide is open to distinctions of the the same or corresponding kinds; that there may be such a thing as self-homicide not less than self-murder—culpable self-homicide—justifiable self-homicide. Donne called his Essay by the Greek name Biathanatos, meaning