A syllabus of the lectures delivered to the senior students in the College of William and Mary, on government : ... To which is added, A discourse ... on the manner in which peculiarities in the anatomical structure affect the moral character / Printed for the university.

  • John Augustine Smith
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A syllabus of the lectures delivered to the senior students in the College of William and Mary, on government : ... To which is added, A discourse ... on the manner in which peculiarities in the anatomical structure affect the moral character / Printed for the university. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    power; (note upon $ XII.) but where the con- stitution does not expressly interfere, their own notions of expediency* seem to be their only rule of conduct. Is it wonderful then, that we should have statutes upon subjectsf with which, * See Note [A] at the end. t Under this head I class the law restraining the rate of interest, and although this doctrine may at first appear strange, a little reflection will, I think, show that it is just. Man in a state of nature, had an undoubted right to exchange any article with which he wished to part, for any other article, which persons of adult years and sound minds were willing to give in return; in other words, to obtain for his goods what has been since called their market price. Now, it would be difficult, I suspect, to show that this right was ever conceded to the body poli- tic, or that there is any essential difference between mo- ney and any other vendible commodity. Were the legislature now to undertake to fix the price of wheat, corn or tobacco, the injustice and absurdity of the measure would be sufficiently glaring; but this is altogether the result of the progress of knowledge, for there is scarcely an article, to which, in some age or country, legislative superintendence has not been ex- tended. The emperor Julian, attempted to repress by an edict the high price of wheat; the rate at which a certain kind of cloth should be sold, was formerly regulated in