Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/332

304 HARVARD LA IV REVIEW, which their conckisions are worked out and delivered.^ An act not otherwise unlawful in itself will not generally become an offence or legal wrong because it is done from a sinister motive, nor will it be any excuse for an act contrary to the general law, or in violation of any one's rights, to show that the motive from which it proceeded was good. If the attempt is made to deal with rules of the purely moral kind by judicial machinery, one of two things will happen. Either the tribunal will be guided by mere isolated impressions of each case, and therefore will not administer justice at all; or, which is more likely, precedent and usage will beget settled rule, and the tribunal will find itself administering a formal system of law, which in time will be as technical, and appeal as openly to an external standard, as any other system. This process took place on a great scale in the formation of the Canon Law, and on a con- siderable scale in the early history of English equity jurisdiction. Besides and beyond the limitation of the field of law to external conduct, there are many actions and kinds of conduct condemned by morality which for various reasons law can either not deal with at all or can deal with only in an incidental and indirect manner. It would be the vulgarest of errors (as we have already hinted) to suppose that any kind of approval is implied in many things being left to the moral judgment of the community, and to such pressure as it can exercise. Law does not stand aside because lawyers or judges think lightly of such things, but because, whether from permanent or from transitory causes, the methods of legal jus- tice are not appropriate for dealing with them, and the attempt to apply those methods would, so far as it could be operative at all, probably do more harm than good. At the same time rules of law may well have, in particular circumstances, an effective influence in maintaining, reinforcing, and even elevating the standard of current morality. The moral ideal present to lawgivers, lawyers, and judges, if it does not always come up to the highest that has been conceived, will at least be, generally speaking, above the common average of practice ; it will represent the standard of the best sort of citizens. This is especially the case in matters of 1 The exceptions are perhaps of an accidental and not very substantial kind, but, after all corrections and allowances, " malice '* does sometimes in English law mean evil motive, such as personal enmity or vindictiveness. The general rule has been con- spicuously affirmed by the House of Lords in Corporation of Bradford v. Pickles, 1895, A. C. 587 ; it remains to be seen whether the House will approve on the final appeal, now pending, the extent to which the exception is carried by the Court of Appeal in Flood V. Jackson, 1895, 2 Q B. 21.