“This is somewhat startling, father,” said I. “There are very few people in this world who do not consider their cases of necessity to be _grave_ ones, and to whom, accordingly, you would not give the right of stealing with a good conscience. And though you should restrict the permission to those only who are really and truly in that condition, you open the door to an infinite number of petty larcenies which the magistrates would punish in spite of your ‘grave necessity,’ and which you ought to repress on a higher principle—you who are bound by your office to be the conservators, not of justice only, but of charity between man and man, a grace which this permission would destroy. For after all, now, is it not a violation of the law of charity, and of our duty to our neighbor, to deprive a man of his property in order to turn it to our own advantage? Such, at least, is the way I have been taught to think hitherto.” “That will not always hold true,” replied the monk; “for our great Molina has taught us that ‘the rule of charity does not bind us to deprive ourselves of a profit, in order thereby to save our neighbor from a corresponding loss.’ He advances this in corroboration of what he had undertaken to prove—‘that one is not bound in conscience to restore the goods which another had put into his hands in order to cheat his creditors.’ Lessius holds the same opinion, on the same ground.[176] Allow me to say, sir, that you have too little compassion for people in distress. Our fathers have had more charity than that comes to: they render ample justice to the poor, as well as the rich; and, I may add, to sinners as well as saints. For, though far from having any predilection for criminals, they do not scruple to teach that the property gained by crime may be lawfully retained. ‘No person,’ says Lessius, speaking generally, ‘is bound, either by the law of nature or by positive laws (that is, _by any law_), to make restitution of what has been gained by committing a criminal action, such as adultery, even though that action is contrary to justice.’ For, as Escobar comments on this writer, ‘though the property which a woman acquires by adultery is certainly gained in an illicit way, yet once acquired, the possession of it is lawful—_quamvis mulier illicitè acquisat, licitè tamen retinet acquisita_.’ It is on this principle that the most celebrated of our writers have formally decided that the bribe received by a judge from one of the parties who has a bad case, in order to procure an unjust decision in his favor, the money got by a soldier for killing a man, or the emoluments gained by infamous crimes, may be legitimately retained. Escobar, who has collected this from a number of our authors, lays down this general rule on the point, that ‘the means acquired by infamous courses, such as murder, unjust decisions, profligacy, &c., are legitimately possessed, and none are obliged to restore them.’ And