higher standard both of feeling and intelligence. Nor is it the moral
standard only which may be used to correct the social standard. We may
often advantageously have recourse to the legal standard for the same
purpose. For the laws of a country express, as a rule, the sentiments of
the wisest and most experienced of its citizens, and hence we might
naturally expect that they would be in advance of the average moral
sentiment of the people, as well as of the social traditions of
particular professions or classes. And this I believe to be usually the
case. For instances, we have to go no further than the comparison
between the laws and the popular or professional sentiment on bribery at
elections, on smuggling, on evasion of taxation, on fraudulent business
transactions, on duelling, on prize-fighting, or on gambling. At the
same time it must be confessed that, as laws sometimes become
antiquated, and the leanings of lawyers are proverbially conservative,
it occasionally happens that, on some points, the average moral
sentiment is in advance of the law. I may select as examples, from
comparatively recent legal history, the continuance of religious
disabilities and the excessive punishment of ordinary or even trivial
crimes; and, perhaps, I may venture to add, as a possible reform in the
future now largely demanded by popular sentiment, some considerable
modifications of the laws regulating the transfer of and the succession
to landed property. Thus it will be seen that law and the sentiment of
society may each be employed as corrective of the other, and that,
consequently, their comparison implies a higher standard than either, by
means of which each may be tested, and to which each, in its turn, may
be referred. This higher or common standard it will be our business to
consider in a subsequent part of this Essay. Meanwhile, it may be
pointed out that, in addition to its function as an occasional
corrective of the legal sanction, the social sanction subserves two
great objects: first, it largely complements the legal sanction, being