conduct in later years has destroyed all the gratitude which was
due to them for their original benefit. In these cases it is not a
benefit itself, but the gratitude owing for a benefit which is
taken away, and the result is, not that one does not possess the
benefit, but that one is not laid under any obligation by it. It is
as though a man were to lend me money, and then burn my house down;
the advantage of the loan is balanced by the damage which he has
caused: I do not repay him, and yet I am not in his debt. In like
manner any one who may have acted kindly and generously to me, and
who afterwards has shown himself haughty, insulting, and cruel,
places me in just the same position as though I never had received
anything from him: he has murdered his own benefits. Though the
lease may remain in force, still a man does not continue to be a
tenant if his landlord tramples down his crops, or cuts down his
orchard; their contract is at an end, not because the landlord has
received the rent which was agreed upon, but because he has made it
impossible that he should receive it. So, too, a creditor often has
to pay money to his debtor, should he have taken more property from
him in other transactions than he claims as having lent him. The
judge does not sit merely to decide between debtor and creditor,
when he says, "You did lend the man money; but then, what followed?
You have driven away his cattle, you have murdered his slave, you
have in your possession plate which you have not paid for. After
valuing what each has received, I order you, who came to this court
as a creditor, to leave it as a debtor." In like manner a balance
is struck between benefits and injuries. In many cases, I repeat, a
benefit is not taken away from him who receives it, and yet it lays
him under no obligation, if the giver has repented of giving it,
called himself unhappy because he gave it, sighed or made a wry
face while he gave it; if he thought that he was throwing it away