crimes of robbery and theft. For, though they are too common, their enormity is sufficiently understood by the laws which are enacted against them, and sufficiently menaced by the terrours which those laws hold out. They are so apparently destructive of social security, their consequences are so easily perceived, and their perniciousness so generally acknowledged, that to be suspected of them is to be infamous; and to be detected in the commission of them, is to be exposed to punishment, and often to death.
But there is another mode of injuring the property of others, and of gaining unjust advantages, which, though not equally liable, at all times, to punishment, with theft and robbery, is, in its own nature, equally criminal, and perhaps more pernicious; therefore, equally open to the censures of reason and religion. This species of guilt is distinguished by the appellation of fraud; a word which, when uttered, really excites a due degree of detestation, and which those, who practise it, perhaps disguise to their consciences by still softer terms.
But that such disguises may deceive the soul no longer; and that what is universally mischievous may be totally abhorred; I shall endeavour to show,
First: The nature of fraud, and the temptations to practise it.
Secondly: How much it is contrary to the rules of religion, and how much it obstructs the happiness of the world.
The nature of fraud, as distinct from other violations of right or property, seems to consist in this, that the man injured is induced to concur in the act by which the injury is done. Thus, to take away any thing valuable, without the owner's knowledge, is a theft; to take it away, against his consent, by threats or force, is a robbery; to borrow it, without intention of returning it, is a fraud, because the owner consents to the act, by which it passed out of his own hands.
All fraud, therefore, supposes deceit, either in the affir-
