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eluded. If I choose to be miserable it is my own business 
alone. If I choose to amuse myself by trying to make others 
miserable, they have a right to prevent me if possible; but 
they have no right to find fault with me for pursuing happiness 
in my own way. They may express their feelings of dislike 
at my experiments as strongly as they choose, which I may 
laugh at as heartily as I choose, but they may not utter one 
word of blame. Society can coin and utter such words as 
“policy,” “ prudence,”, “selfishness,” “ expediency,” &c., but 
it cannot, as society alone, have any concern with such words 
as “ ought,” “ duty,” “ obligation,” “praise or blame,” “vir- 
tue or vice,” & c.* Morality is beyond its province and its 
power, but morality exists with its elements of conscience, 
right, and obligation ; and as morality cannot be the product 
of human law, experience, or observation, it must be an integral 
part of man's nature, and so be the product of the Author of 
his nature, or God. Deitv is, consequently, a moral creator. 
20. But man is conscious of a certain amount of free agency 
in the origination of his actions. Necessitarians may reason as 
they will, but the moment they begin to act their reasonings 
are cast to the winds. They would shrink from asserting that 
a thief in his theft is as praiseworthy as an honest man in his 
honesty, which they would be compelled to do, if they believed 
that the one had no power to be honest, nor the other to be 
dishonest. . The fact of free agency, up to the point so lucidly 
and ably indicated by the Dev. Dr. Irons, in his admirable 
paper on “ Human Responsibility,” is one of the surest 
utterances of consciousness, next to that of our own existence, 
and cannot be shaken by any reasoning however plausible, for 
the reasoning that would attempt to shake it must begin by 
annihilating itself. It is clear, therefore, that if a man be free 
to choose either right or wrong, in order to his own good 
and that of others, he must be guided as to which he ought to 
elect, and have reasons placed before him why he ought to 
prefer the right to the wrong. 
21. Therefore our next axiom is, that moral consciousness , 
with moral freedom, requires moral government. It will suffice 
here to quote the words of Dr. Irons from the paper just 
named : “ There is no alternative, we repeat, but this : disclaim 
all honour and all shame; resist all the facts of human 
nature s accountable existence here; or acknowledge a Supreme 
Power, which knows the whole responsible community, and 
governs it. It is perfectly clear that a Moral Governor must 
* See this subject of Utilitarianism ably treated, from another point of 
view, by Jas. Eeddie, Esq., in the Journal of Transactions , Victoria Institute, 
ii. 129. 
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