This may be as true as it seems beautiful; but it is utterly meaningless.

Though we should prolong this litany through ten pages (it has been filtered through a thousand volumes), we should be no nearer to the solution of the question.
"Justice is public utility," says Aristotle.

That is true, but it is a tautology.

"The principle that the public welfare ought to be the object of the legislator"-- says M.Ch.Comte in his "Treatise on Legislation"-- "cannot be overthrown.

But legislation is advanced no farther by its announcement and demonstration, than is medicine when it is said that it is the business of physicians to cure the sick." Let us take another course.