He himself was fully convinced that justice and morality were of eternal and immutable obligation, and that the best interests of all beings lie in their perpetual development and application.

This eternity of Justice is beautifully illustrated by Montesquieu.

"Long," says he, "before positive laws were instituted, the moral relations of justice were absolute and universal.

To say that there were no justice or injustice but that which depends on the injunctions or prohibitions of positive laws, is to say that the radii which spring from a centre are not equal till we have formed a circle to illustrate the proposition.

We must, therefore, acknowledge that the relations of equity were antecedent to the positive laws which corroborated them." But though Philus was fully convinced of this, in order to give his friends Scipio and Laelius an opportunity of proving it, he frankly brings forward every argument for injustice that sophistry had ever cast in the teeth of reason .-- _By the original Translator_.
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