70 TRANSACTIONS, 1901-2^ 



07t the natural liberty of its individual members in order ta 

 secure the well-being of society. Of course I am well aware 

 that such a riefinition will savour of heresy to the disciple of 

 Sir Wiliam Blackstone. But to the latter-day student my 

 refusal to laboriously flog the dead horse of Blackstoue's 

 definition of Positive Law (or a^ he styles it: ' Municipal Law') 

 cannot fail to commend itself. So far as the great eigh- 

 teenth-century commentator is concerned it is not necessary 

 for fne to say more than that if we. accept his declaration that 

 the totality of Positive Law is: " A rule of civil conduct, pre- 

 scribed by the supreme power in a State, commanding what 

 is right and prohibiting what is wrong (i)," then we must 

 assume that in die law we shall find a criterion of proper 

 behaviour in all the situations and conditions of social or 

 civil life ; and, moreover, tliat we n-eed not concern ourselves 

 about any well-doing that is not commanded by the law, nor 

 fear that we may do wrong if any contemplated act be not 

 forbidden by it. To understand the fallacy of this assump- 

 tion we have only to reflect that the law commands but a very 

 small proportion of the acts that constitute one's conduct in 

 the multifarious concerns of civil life, and that its prohibitions 

 are correspondingly few. As Professor Sheldon Amos so 

 pithily says : (2) 



A man may be a bad husband, a bad father, a bad guardian, without coming in- 

 to contact with the rules of a single law. He may be an extortionate landlord, a wast- 

 f ul tenant, a hard dealer, an unreliable tradesman, and yet the legal machinery of the 

 country may be quite powerless to stimulate or chastise him. He may be, furthermore, 

 a self seeking politician, an unscrupulous demagogue, or an indolent aristocrat, and yet 

 satisfy to the utmost the claims of the law upon him. Nevertheless it is just in the con- 

 duct of these several relationships that the bulk of human life consists, and national 

 prosperity and honour depends. 



And all this seems to imply that the attitude of the law 

 toward men in society may be summed up in the declaration: 

 " So long as you do not infringe my prohibitions, be as wicked 

 as you -please!" But this is only true in a qualified sense; 

 It is true the law does not seek to enforce abstract morality; 



(1) Comm. Bk. I., Introd. 45 



(2) Science of Law, p. 30 



