Inquiry Concerning Political Justice by William Godwin 1793 INQUIRY CONCERNING POLITICAL JUSTICE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON MODERN MORALS AND HAPPINESS BOOK I: OF THE POWERS OF MAN CONSIDERED IN HIS SOCIAL CAPACITY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The object proposed in the following work is an investigation concerning that form of public or political society, that system of intercourse and reciprocal action, extending beyond the bounds of a single family, which shall be found most to conduce to the general benefit. How may the peculiar and independent operation of each individual in the social state most effectually be preserved? How may the security each man ought to possess, as to his life, and the employment of his faculties according to the dictates of his own understanding, be most certainly defended from invasion? How may the indi...
BOOK VI CHAPTER V OF OATHS Oaths of office and duty. - Their absurdity. - Their immoral consequences. - Oaths of evi- dence - less atrocious. - Opinion of the liberal and resolved respecting them. - Their essential features: contempt of veracity - false morality. - Their particular structure. - Abstract principles assumed by them to be true. - Their inconsistency with these principles. THE same arguments that prove the injustice of tests maybe applied universally to all oaths of duty and office. If I entered upon the office without an oath, what would be my duty? Can the oath that is imposed upon me make any alteration in my duty? If not, does not the very act of imposing it by implication assert a falsehood? Will this falsehood have no injurious effect upon a majority of the persons concerned? What is the true criterion that I shall faithfully discharge the office that conferred upon me? Surely my past life, not any...