Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/333

305 JUSTICE ACCORDING TO LAW, 305 good faith, whether we look to commercial honesty or to relations of personal confidence. With few exceptions, the law has in such matters been constantly ahead not only of the practice, but of the ordinary professions of business men. We have similar results on a more striking scale when a law which is not indige- nous brings in with it the moral standards on which it is founded. Thus a good deal of European morality has been made current in India by the Anglo-Indian codes ; and European morality itself has been largely moulded not only by the teaching of the Christian Church, but by the formal embodiment of that teaching in both ecclesiastical and secular laws. The treatment of homicide by early EngHsh criminal law was founded on the extremely strict view taken by the Church of the guilt of blood-shedding; and the extinction of duelling in this country seems to be due, in no small part, to the steady refusal of English law to regard killing in a duel, even without any circumstances of treachery or unfairness, as any- thing else than murder. We are not speaking here of the mere fact that persons abstain from unlawful conduct through dread of the legal consequences, a fact which, taken by itself, has no moral significance at all. Again, rules of law differ from rules of morality in excess as well as in defect. It is needful for the peace and order of society to have definite rules for a great many common occasions of life, although no guidance can be found in ethical reasoning for adopt- ing one rule rather than another. There is no law of nature that prescribes driving on either the right or the left side of the road, as is plainly shown by the fact that our English custom to take the left side is the reverse of that which is observed in most other countries. But in a land of frequented roads there must be some fixed rule in order that people who meet on the road may know what to expect of one another. And, the rule being once fixed either way for the sake of general convenience, we are bound in moral as well as in legal duty to observe the rule as we find it. On much the same footing are the rules which require particular forms to be observed in particular transactions, for the purpose of making the proof of them authentic and easily found, or in the interest of the public revenue, or for other reasons. There are not many such cases in which the form actually imposed by the law can be said to be in itself the only appropriate one, or obviously much better than others that might be thought of. But, since it has been thought fit to require some form, it is necessary