extreme misery; it will readily, I believe, be admitted, that the
strict laws of justice are suspended, in such a pressing
emergence, and give place to the stronger motives of necessity
and self-preservation. Is it any crime, after a shipwreck, to
seize whatever means or instrument of safety one can lay hold of,
without regard to former limitations of property? Or if a city
besieged were perishing with hunger; can we imagine, that men
will see any means of preservation before them, and lose their
lives, from a scrupulous regard to what, in other situations,
would be the rules of equity and justice? The use and tendency of
that virtue is to procure happiness and security, by preserving
order in society: but where the society is ready to perish from
extreme necessity, no greater evil can be dreaded from violence
and injustice; and every man may now provide for himself by all
the means, which prudence can dictate, or humanity permit. The
public, even in less urgent necessities, opens granaries, without
the consent of proprietors; as justly supposing, that the
authority of magistracy may, consistent with equity, extend so
far: but were any number of men to assemble, without the tie of
laws or civil jurisdiction; would an equal partition of bread in
a famine, though effected by power and even violence, be regarded
as criminal or injurious?

Suppose likewise, that it should be a virtuous man's fate to fall
into the society of ruffians, remote from the protection of laws
and government; what conduct must he embrace in that melancholy
situation? He sees such a desperate rapaciousness prevail; such a
disregard to equity, such contempt of order, such stupid
blindness to future consequences, as must immediately have the
most tragical conclusion, and must terminate in destruction to