evil-doers, and a terror to them that did well, than observation that well-doing not infrequently led to eternal misery, and evil-doing to eternal bliss. Again, if in China, where criminals under sentence of death are permitted, if they can, by purchase or otherwise, to procure substitutes to die in their stead, a son were to propose to die for a parent base enough to take advantage of the offer, could any arrangement be more plainly repugnant to the common-weal than that by which society would thus lose one of its noblest, instead of getting rid of one of its vilest members? Or, when in England, a thrifty son, by consenting to cut the entail of an estate to which he is heir-apparent, enables a prodigal father to consume in riotous living substance which would otherwise have eventually become his, is he not clearly taking the worse course for the public by permitting the property to be wasted, instead of causing it to be husbanded? Beyond all question, American Puritan, Chinese or English devotee to filial affection, would thus, each in her or his degree, have, in the circumstances supposed, acted in a manner opposed to the general interest, and would therefore be condemned by Utilitarianism as having acted immorally. Nor could this verdict be gainsaid if utility and morality were, as Utilitarianism assumes them to be, one and the same thing. Clearly, that the just should suffer for the unjust, the innocent for the guilty, is diametrically opposed to the welfare of society; wherefore, according to utilitarian principles, by consenting so to suffer, the just becomes unjust, the innocent renders himself guilty. But can there be a better proof that utilitarian principles are unsound than that this should be a legitimate deduction from them? Can there be better proof that utility and morality are not identical, but two absolutely distinct things? Plainly, there can be no meritorious or commendable immorality; neither can there be any virtue which is not meritorious and commendable. Is there, then, no merit, nothing commendable, in accepting ruin or in volunteering to die temporarily, or to perish everlastingly, in order to save a fellow-creature from ruin, or death, or perdition? Does not such conduct, considered independently and without reference either to its utility or its hurtfulness, command our instantaneous and enthusiastic admiration? But how, being so admirable, can it be immoral? how other than virtuous? What else is it, indeed, but the very perfection of that purest virtue which, content to be its own reward, deliberately cuts itself off from all other recompense? Without changing the immemorial meaning of the most familiar words, there is no avoiding the obvious answers to these questions. If virtue and morality, right and wrong, are to continue to mean anything like that which, except by Utilitarians, has always been considered to be their only meaning, it is not simply not wrong, it is not simply