THE FISCAL QUESTION 119 



the laws of morality, and a mathematician or physicist 

 does not ask what are the ethical aspects of a problem in 

 geometry or of Kepler's laws. 



In the last resort it will be admitted, no doubt, that all 

 these different provinces may be found to touch upon that 

 of the moralist ; for the world is one, and so is the human 

 soul which deals with it. Other things being equal, a 

 good man, whose powers are well in hand, will perform 

 any work he undertakes better than a man whose will is 

 weak, whose aims are low, and whose life is confused and 

 distracted by warring passions. But this is all that can 

 be said. And if the moralist seeks to interfere beyond 

 this, and introduces theories as to the ethical aspects of 

 such work, there is no option but to take him reverently 

 by the hand and lead him out of court as a most respectable 

 but irrelevant witness. 



Now, this view is regarded as holding in a pre-eminent 

 degree of international business. Considerations enter 

 here which remove this province still further from that 

 of ordinary morality. For States are not considered to 

 be moral agents, and in their relations to each other the 

 ordinary moral maxims are supposed not to hold. States- 

 men, while engaged upon international business, must 

 neither act nor be judged in the same way as when they 

 are occupied upon their private concerns. ' ' Lying, indif- 

 ference to human suffering, rapacity, cruelty," says Lord 

 Lytton (in his Rectorial Address in Glasgow in 1888), 

 ' ' do not lose their essential character because they are 

 incidental to public actions. And yet we are not, I think, 

 to judge statesmen as we should judge private persons." 

 He maintains that, as between nations, the sixth and the 

 eighth commandments do not hold, at least in the same 



