Barbeyrac Discourse on What is permitted by the Laws巴贝拉克关于法律允许的话语.pdfVIP

Discourse on What Is Permitted by the Laws In which it is shown that what is permitted by the laws is not always just and moral Magnificent and most honored Lord Bailiff, most honored Lords of the Council of this City, learned and respected members of the Academy, my most honored colleagues, listeners of no matter what rank, sex and age. The subject I have chosen will be for many a great paradox, both in itself and coming from me. It is usual to set the probity and the duties of a good citizen squarely within the frame of what the [438] laws of the land require.1 It is an equally common assumption to imagine that knowledge and observation of the laws must constitute the entire scope, indeed the non plus ultra, of the studies of a jurisconsult, a man of law, an advocate and, in general, all who are involved in work that has some relation to the laws. But the great masters of the art, the wise inventors of the most famous and the most widely received laws, in other words the jurisconsults of Ancient Rome, were of a different mind. They pro- fessed a substantial philosophy that embraced the whole extent of jus- tice and equity; they proposed to turn men into good persons, not only through fear of punishment but also through love of virtue, which car- 1. Vir bonus est quis? Qui consulta Patrum, qui Leges Juraque servat Sed videt hunc omnis domus vicinia tota Introrsus turpem, speciosum pelle decora. Horace, Book I, Epist. xvi, line 40 et seq. 307 308 what is permitted by the laws ries its own reward;2 they drew a careful distinction between the rules of law, that determine the findings of the judge (see Monsieur Noodt, Julius Paulus, chap. x), and the precepts of right, that determine the conduct of a good man. As their maxim, they proposed: “Not every- thing that the laws permit is just and moral.”3 It is this same