Volume 2 > Half-Volume 4

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party rancour, and defence of his esteemed friend,
protracted but did not prevent the issue. A motion
was made in the committee for overtures of the
General Assembly, " How far it was proper for them
to call before them and censure the authors of infidel
books." After a stormy debate the motion was lost,
but the indefatigable Mr. Anderson presented, in
name of himself and those who adhered to his
opinions, a petition and complaint to the presbytery
of Edinburgh, praying that the author of the Essays
on Morality, &c., might be censured "according to
the law of the gospel, and the practice of this and
all other well-governed churches." Defences were
given in, and the petitioner obtained leave to reply,
but before the matter came to a conclusion he had
breathed his last, and the soul of the controversy
perishing along with him, Lord Kames was left to
pursue his philosophical studies unmolested. The
chief subject of this controversy may be discovered
in the curious and original views maintained by the
author of the essays on the subject of liberty and
necessity. Full freedom to the will of mankind he
maintains to be in opposition to the existence and
operation of a Deity, who prejudges all his actions,
and has given him certain motives which he cannot
avoid following; while, to preserve common uniform-
ity with the doctrine of an innate sense of right and
wrong previously maintained, the author is obliged
to admit that man must have a consciousness of free-
will to enable him to act according to that innate
sense: he therefore arrives at a sort of intermediate
doctrine, which may be said to maintain that while
the will is not in reality free, it is the essence of our
nature that it should appear to us to be so. "Let
us fairly own," says the author, "that the truth of
things is on the side of necessity; but that it was
necessary for man to be formed with such feelings
and notions of contingency as would fit him for the
part he has to act." "It is true that a man of this
belief, when he is seeking to make his mind easy
after some bad action, may reason upon the princi-
ples of necessity, that, according to the constitution
of his nature, it was impossible for him to have acted
any other part. But this will give him little relief.
In spite of all reasonings his remorse will subsist.
Nature never intended us to act upon this plan: and
our natural principles are too deeply rooted to give
way to philosophy." . . . "These discoveries are
also of excellent use, as they furnish us with one of
the strongest arguments for the existence of the Deity,
and as they set the wisdom and goodness of his pro-
vidence in the most striking light. Nothing carries
in it more express characters of design; nothing can
be conceived more opposite to chance, than a plan so
artfully contrived for adjusting our impressions and
feelings to the purposes of life." The doctrine may
appear at first sight anomalous; but it displays equal
ingenuity in its discovery, and acuteness in its sup-
port, and is well worthy of the deepest attention.
A certain clergyman of the Church of Scotland is
said to have seen in this theory an admirable exposi-
tion of the doctrine of predestination, and to have
hailed the author as a brother; and certainly a little
comparison will show no slight analogy betwixt the
two systems; but other persons thought differently,
and the reverend gentleman was superseded. These
fiery controversies have carried us beyond an event
which served to mitigate their rancour�the elevation
of Mr. Home to the bench of the Court of Session,
where he took his seat in February 1752, by the title of
Lord Kames; an appointment which, as it could not
be but agreeable and satisfactory to the learned and in-
genious, seems to have met the general concurrence
and approbation of the common people of the country.
In 1755 Lord Kames was appointed a member of
the board of trustees for the encouragement of the
fisheries, arts, and manufactures of Scotland, and
likewise one of the commissioners for the manage-
ment of the annexed estates, on both of which im-
portant duties it would appear he bestowed the at-
tention his ever-active mind enabled him to direct
to many different subjects. In the midst of his varied
judicial and ministerial labours, two legal works ap-
peared from the pen of Lord Kames. The Statute
Law of Scotland Abridged, with Historical Notes, pub-
lished in 1759, was never known beyond the library
of the Scots lawyer, and has now almost fallen into
disuse even there. Historical Law Tracts, published
in 1757, was of a more ambitious sort, and acquired
something beyond professional celebrity. The mat-
ters discussed in this volume are exceedingly miscel-
laneous, and present a singular mixture of "first
principles" of morality, metaphysics, &c., and Scots
law. The author has here displayed in the strongest
light his usual propensity for hunting all principles
so far back into the misty periods of their origin, that
attempting to find the lost traces of the peculiar idea
he is following, he pursues some fanciful train of
thought, which has just as much chance of being
wrong as of being right. "I have often amused
myself," says the author, "with a fanciful resem-
blance of law to the river Nile. When we enter
upon the municipal law of any country in its present
state, we resemble a traveller, who, crossing the
Delta, loses his way among the numberless branches
of the Egyptian river. But when we begin at the
source, and follow the current of law, it is in that
case no less easy and agreeable; and all its relations
and dependencies are traced with no greater difficulty
than are the many streams into which that magnifi-
cent river is divided before it is lost in the sea." If
the philosopher meant to compare his searches after
first principles to the investigation of the source of
the Nile, the simile was rather unfortunate, and
tempts one by a parody to compare his speculations
to those of one who will discover the navigability
or fertilizing power of a river by a confused and
endless range among its various sources, when he
has the grand main body of the river open to his
investigations, from which he may find his way, by
a sure and undoubted course, to its principal sources,
should he deem it worth his while to penetrate them.
This work exhibits in singularly strong colours the
merits and defects of its author. While his ingen-
uity has led him into fanciful theories, and prompted
him to attribute to the actions of barbarous govern-
ments subtle intentions of policy, of which the actors
never dreamed, it has enabled him to point out con-
nections in the history of our law, and to explain the
natural causes of anomalies, for which the practical
jurisconsult might have long looked in vain. The
history of criminal jurisprudence is a prominent part
of this work. The author attempts to confute the
well-founded theories of Voltaire, Montesquieu, and
many others, tracing the origin of punishment, and
consequently the true principles of criminal juris-
prudence, from the feelings of vindictiveness and
indignation inherent in human nature when injured
�a principle we fear too often followed to require
a particular vindication or approval. We cannot
pass from this subject without attracting attention
to the enlightened views thrown out by Lord Kames
on the subject of entails, views which he has seen
the importance of frequently repeating and inculcat-
ing, though with many others he spoke to the deaf
adder, who heeded not the wisdom of his words.
He proposed the entire repeal of the statute of 1685,
which, by an invention of the celebrated Sir Thomas