170 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 



might become defaulters to that amount, four to half the 

 amount, and so on, without rendering the guarantee fund 

 insolvent. If it be tolerably well ascertained that the in- 

 stances of dishonesty (yearly) among such persons amount 

 to one in five hundred, this club would continue to exist, 

 subject to being in debt in a bad year to an amount 

 which it would be able to discharge in good ones. The 

 only question necessary to be asked previous to the for- 

 mation of such a club would be, — may it not be feared 

 that the motive to resist dishonesty would be lessened by 

 the existence of the club, or that ready-made rogues, by 

 belonging to it, might find the means of obtaining situa- 

 tions which they would otherwise have been kept out of 

 by the impossibility of obtaining security among those 

 *who know them ? Suppose this be sufficiently answered 

 by saying that none but those who could bring satisfac- 

 tory testimony to their previous good character should be 

 allowed to join the club; that persons who may now 

 hope that a deficiency on their parts will be made up and 

 hushed up by the relative or friend who is security, will 

 know very well that the club will have no motive to de- 

 cline a prosecution, or to keep the secret, and so on. It 

 then only remains to ask whether the sum demanded for 

 the guarantee is sufficient* The philosophical princi- 

 ple on which the scheme proceeds, seems to be simply 

 thie, that, amongst a given (large) number of persons oJ 

 good character, there will be within a year or consider- 

 able space of time, a determinate number of instances in 

 which moral principle and the terror of the consequences 

 of guilt will be overcome by temptations of a determinate 

 kind and amount, and thus occasion a periodical amount 

 of loss which the association must make up. 



This statistical regularity in moral affairs fully estab- 

 lishes their being under the presidency of law. Man is 

 now seen to be an enigma only as an individual ; in the 

 mass he is a mathematical problem. It is hardly neces- 

 sary to say, much less to argue, that mental action, being 

 proved to be under law, passes at once into the category 

 of natural things. Its old metaphysical character van- 

 ishes in a moment, and the distinction usually taken be- 

 tween physical and moral is annulled, as only an error in 



* Dublin Review, Aug. 1840. The Guarantee Society has since 

 been established, and is likely to become a useful and prosperous 

 institution 



