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THE RELATIVE DUTIES OF MANKIND. [Part III.

far a wilful abandonment of his master’s business. If a servantemploys another servant to do his business, and in doing it theservant so employed is guilty of an injury, the master is stillliable. But this principle is applicable to those cases only, inwhich the nature of the business is such as to require the aidof subordinate persons, and then there is an implied authority toemploy such persons.*

The moral and legal responsibility of the master depends, too,in some degree, on the nature of the service. Inn-keepers andcommon carriers, for instance, are more extensively liable forthe misconduct of their servants, than other masters. If the ser-vants of an inn-keeper should purloin the goods of his guest,the master is liable ; and the case is the same, if the servants ofthe common carrier embezzle the goods that are intrusted totheir master. This is a doctrine founded in the best policy ; for,in these cases, guests, and those who employ common carriers,are under the necessity of trusting them ’with their property,without reposing any special confidence in them ; for they aregenerally strangers to them ; and the nature of the business ofinn-keepers and common carriers is such, as gives them greatopportunity for collusion with their servants in robbing their em-ployers. To prevent this mischief, they are both legally andmorally made liable for the fault of their servants ; and, in suchcases, when the master of other servants would not be liable, f

The relation of master and servant is a single instance of thefar more general relation of superior and inferior ; and the supe-rior party, being always under the very strong temptations of in-terest, and of that love of ruling, which is one of the universalinfirmities of human nature, J is in special danger of abusing thestation which the Providence of God has assigned him, andought, therefore, to be peculiarly on his guard. One of the ways,in which masters sometimes abuse their station, consists in de-

* Kent’s Commentaries on American Law, Vol. II. pp. 209, 210.

t Reeve’s Domestic Relations, p. 364. The author, in the three precedingparagraphs, has drawn aid from the law of master and servant, because, onthis part of the subject, law, good morals, and sound policy, seem to him tocoincide. He proposes to do the same when examining the relation of princi-pal and agent in the next chapter.

t <{ Qui nolunt occidere quemquam, posse volunt,” says Juvenal, Sat. X. 96.