Every man's hand is against his neighbour. No one
feels himself safe, and therefore no one thinks it worth while to lay
up for the morrow. No one expects justice and mercy to be done to
him, and therefore no one thinks it worth while to do justice and
mercy to others. And thus they live in continual fear and
quarrelling, feeding like wild animals on game or roots, often, when
they have bad luck in their hunting, on offal which our dogs would
refuse, and dwindle away and become fewer and wretcheder year by
year; in this way do the savages in New South Wales live to this day,
for want of law.
It is for our good, then, that God has put into the heart of man to
make laws, and to obey them as sacred and divine things. For our
good, in order to save us from sinking down into the same state of
poverty and misery in which the savages are. For our good, because
we are fallen creatures, with selfish and corrupt wills, continually
apt to break loose, and please ourselves at the expense of our
neighbours. For our good, because, however fallen we are, we are
still brothers, members of God's family, bound to each other by duty
and relationship, if not by love.
Just as in a family, if parents, brothers, and sisters will not do
their duty to each other lovingly and of their free will, the law
interferes, and the custom of the country interferes, and the opinion
of neighbours interferes, and says: "You may not love your parents:
but you have no right to leave them to starve.
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