the obligations of charity cannot involve more than certain assistance 'out of superfluities, to the extent of some privation of pleasures.'* Even in cases of 'extreme necessity

.. no one is bound to lay out any large sum of money for relieving a poor man from peril of death.'† Only in cases of the gravest necessity does a call exist for some contribution' out of the strict necessaries for the donor's station,' which are enumerated as comprising not merely what is needful for the education of the family, but also the maintenance of servants, the reception of guests, the cost of fitting presents, and of customary entertainments. It seems to us that in virtue of this definition of 'necessaries,' any one disinclined to charity might escape its calls on the plea of impecuniosity, while this had been artfully incurred by deliberately wasteful expenditure on lavish feastings, with the express view of securing a plea, which must be held valid by a Jesuit confessor, for shirking an irksome obligation. For Father Gury lays it down distinctly, that no evil intention can render wicked any deed which in itself must not by nature be necessarily evil §-a proposition illustrated by various remarkable exemplifications. A judge is declared free from blame who may have condemned a murderer to death, though he was actuated in pronouncing the sentence by personal hatred, because the sentence was within his legal attributes. The same rule is held to apply to a landowner, who, with the deliberate intention of injuring his neighbour, diverts a stream into a particular channel, if only he can allege that in its old course it had caused some annoyance to himself, for he would be merely availing himself of a faculty within his strict right.

Father Gury does not shrink from extending justifications under this head even to acts designed with the view of compassing death. 'An individual sets poison or a snare in a locality where his enemy, though very rarely, passes, with the express intention that he might perish if he should chance

On the same page (vol. i. p. 144) we have some curious calculations as to the proportion, not of gross income but of what remains over outgoings-of loose pocket-money-that need be bestowed in alms to fulfil all ordinary obligations of charity. According to the opinion best entitled to acceptance, one-fiftieth is said to be ample, and even this proportion need not be so expended where the superfluous sum is very large. Some doctors, indeed, he adds, as, for instance, Concina, characterised as 'sententiarum rigidarum fautor' (vol. ii. p. 631), are disposed to claim for the poor a twentieth, and even possibly a tenth.

In necessitate gravi vel extremâ . . . . nemo tamen tenetur magnam pecuniæ summam erogare ad pauperem a periculo mortis liberandum.'-Gury, vol. i. p. 144.

See various definitions, Gury, vol. i. p. 144.

§ Ad injuriam non sufficit mala intentio.' Gury, vol. i. p. 405. See also p. 366.

to

6

to come by. A physician applies the degree of attention he is bound strictly by his calling to exercise, but out of hatred is resolved to apply none beyond, in order that the patient's death might ensue. Gury asks whether these men should be held guilty of having wrongfully caused death, if this actually came about from circumstances prepared with so much deliberation. His answer is distinct, that according to the more accredited opinion they should be held exempt from guilt, because, on the one hand, the external act is not unjust, inasmuch as, in human dealings, the mere possibility of another man's injury has not to be taken into account, and on the other hand an internal act is not rendered unjust in virtue of intention, for intention has influence neither for the efficacy of a cause, nor for peril of injury. Consequently, the result must be said to have happened by mere accident, and of this an evil intention does not change the nature.'* We venture to affirm that no one who has thoroughly drunk in the essence of Father Gury's teaching-and it cannot be too often repeated that his teaching is now systematically administered in most Roman Catholic seminaries-need ever be disturbed in his conscience as to any moral liabilities being consequent on intentions, however wicked, if these have only been artfully connected with agencies of which, by some ingenuity, it could be plausibly pleaded that in some conceivable contingencies they might prove possibly harmless.

It must be admitted that Gury is elaborately precise when dealing with points of conscience that arise out of transactions which, to unsophisticated minds, seem acts of fraud or theft. may perhaps cause surprise to hear it gravely questioned, in a Handbook of Moral Duties, whether you are bound to make any reparation for the harm that has befallen another in consequence of your unjust deed, as for instance, if the theft were imputed to him of that which you yourself had stolen.' Father Gury will not even admit the possible probability of this notion, and he gives three grounds, respectively probable, more probable, and certain, against such obligation, even though you should have expressly striven to get your own action imputed to him;' the basis of his argumentation being laid in a casuistic distinction between what is accidental and what is inherent, and in the assumed inefficacy of evil intention to render evil any action of which the possible indifference can be pleaded.† Astounding

See for all this Gury, vol. i. pp. 366-7.

Gury, vol. i. p. 404, Resp. 2 and 3 ad Quæst. 13. 'An tenearis reparare damnum alicui obveniens occasione injustæ tuæ actionis, v. gr. si furatus fueris et furtum ipsi imputetur. . . . Imo probabiliter etiam negandum est, licet de industriâ egeris, ut actio tua ipsi imputetur, quia semper hæc actio est tantum

causa

ing as this may sound, the following exemplification of what roguery may perpetrate, with every security against disturbance of conscience, will probably seem yet stranger. 'Quirinus, with the intention to steal a piece of cloth, breaks into a shop at night and lights a candle, taking due precaution to guard against the danger of fire; but, by some sudden chance, for instance the leap of a cat, the candle is pitched into the straw; quickly the whole shop is in flames, and the thief taking flight only just gets off safe. What about Quirinus? Why he is liable for nothing, inasmuch as he never contemplated the danger. He is certainly not liable for the cloth it was his intention to steal, even though he had laid his hand on it, for its destruction also is involuntary; neither is the seizing of the cloth the cause of the injury, nor did the carrying of the candle create the immediate peril of conflagration, sufficient care having been employed.'* The necessary conclusion from this exemplification is, that should some one have broken into a dwelling, with deliberate intentions of burglary, and should he have become the direct agent of an occurrence which but for his unlawful presence at that very time never could have happened, involving intensely aggravated injury to the already wronged owner of the invaded dwelling, nevertheless this burglarious individual would be entitled to dismiss from his conscience all idea of his being under obligations of reparation (provided he himself has also lost the goods on which he had laid burglarious hands)-as regards the consumed dwelling, because his instrumentality had been unpremeditated, as regards the purloined articles, because they had subsequently slipped out of his hold.

-as

The whole theory which is propounded by our Jesuit divine, in regard to the laws that should regulate distinctions between Mine and Thine, departs so widely from what are generally held to be fundamental principles, that we must say a few more words on a matter so intimately affecting the capital relations of society. Although we were told that not even the direst distress could establish a call to make any such disbursement in charitable relief as would encroach on our comforts, we learn that not merely a sense of pinching necessity but the bare apprehension of its imminence would entitle an individual to help himself out of his neighbour's property. Here again we encounter that capital feature which, like a red thread, runs through the whole system of Jesuit doctrine, providing the unfailing sanction for laxness in the appli

causa damni per accidens et non per se; non enim in illud ex naturâ suâ efficaciter influxit. Prava enim intentio non efficit ut injustum sit illud opus, quod ex sc respectu tertii injustum non est.'

See Second Case. Gury, vol. i. p. 406.

cation of principles-namely, the unlimited discretion accorded to the individual in assertion of justificatory pleas. Just as for the probability of opinions and the invincibility of ignorance, so also the determining test for the plea authorising an invasion of other people's property rests wholly on the ipse dixit of the party interested in exemption from established law; for who can verify the existence of an inward apprehension as to necessity being imminent? All that is wanted in the eyes of Gury is, that a person should vehemently affirm his having been prompted by some inscrutable dread of threatened distress. Of necessity itself, however, a definition is given. It is of three degrees: 'ordinary, in which pauper mendicants as a rule find themselves;' 'grave, in which life is kept up with great labour;' and 'extreme, in which life itself is in risk.' An individual in this last plight is pronounced to be entitled 'to make use of as much of another person's property as may suffice for relieving himself from the said necessity, on the ground that division of goods, however it may have been made, never can derogate from the natural right appertaining to every one to provide for himself, when suffering from extreme necessity. In such circumstances all things therefore become common, so that any one receiving another person's property for his own succour receives a truly common thing which he converts into his own, just as if this were happening before the division of goods. Consequently, he commits no theft.'* The allegation often heard in Germany that the strength of the Communistic movement lies there amidst a population prone to priestly influences, will hardly lose in weight when we find propositions enunciated by such high ecclesiastical authority, that embody maxims of the rankest Communism.

Even this does not exhaust the pleas advanced by Gury in justification of proceedings which unskilled Christians would consider acts of reprehensible violence. All that has been said about extreme necessity,' says Gury, 'is also applicable to quasi extreme or very grave necessity, such being deemed to have occurred when there is probable peril of incurring death, or of losing an important limb, or of lasting imprisonment, or of undergoing the penalty of the hulks (panam triremium), or very serious or enduring illness.'t Let it be noted that in the schedule of justificatory circumstances, no qualifying term makes the application in reference to the hulks dependent on the justice or injustice of the sentence. In foreign countries condemnation to the hulkstechnically termed the Bagnes-has been freely awarded to those considered dangerous revolutionists. We need only call to mind

*For all this see Gury, vol. i. pp. 374-5. + Gury, Resol. iv. p. 375.

the

the Neapolitan Liberals of 1848-Poerio and his comrades, who for so many years had to drag the galley slaves' chains. Again, recently, we have seen deported first to the Bagnes on the French coast, and then to penal settlements, large convoys of so-called Communard prisoners as men too dangerous for society to tolerate. We should like to have it from the lips of a skilled Jesuit Father, how he would have borne himself in the following case. We assume our Father to have been Almoner in the prison of Poerio or of Rochefort, and that it had come to his knowledge that either was planning evasion, and cunningly contriving to procure through robbery the means for seducing the gaolers, so as to effect his escape from that convict condition which is affirmed by Father Gury to constitute the kind of necessity which justifies recourse to such practices. Would the Father Almoner have spoken words of encouragement to the plotting prisoners as engaged on a meritorious enterprise, or would he have informed the governor of the intended evasion, and if so, on what ground would he have justified that proceeding in the face of maxims confirmed by the highest authorities of the Church, through the sanction accorded to Gury's book? Father Gury himself candidly admits that what is lawful to the principal is lawful to an accomplice, so that a friend breaking into a bank, to procure the money for facilitating the escape of a confederate out of the Bagne, would be simply showing that he loved his neighbour as himself.' * Lest the reader should fancy that these rather startling propositions flow from a train of thought peculiar to Gury, we subjoin a passage on the same subject from that other eminent Jesuit teacher, Father Moullet: Whoever, in extreme necessity, takes another person's property for the needful sustenance of his own life or that of his belongings, does not commit theft. For in that condition, all things become common, especially as to enjoyment.' † Those familiar with the 'Provincial Letters' will remember the story of Jean d'Albe, serving-man in the Jesuit College, who, having robbed his masters, pleaded that he had only acted on the doctrine he had heard them broach, as, under the conviction that he had been made to work in excess of what he was paid for, he had simply helped himself to what he was persuaded to be his due. This story, which reads like a squib of Pascal's invention, would be strictly in harmony with Gury's doctrine. 'Can servants,' is his query, who are of opinion that their wages are inferior to the work done by them, make use of clandestine compensation?'-occulta compensatio, which is defined as consist

* Gury, vol. i. p. 375.

† Moul'et. Comp. rars 1, p. 274.