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THE RELATIVE DUTIES OF MANKIND. [Part III.

sisting between a lawyer and his client, a confessor and the per-son confessing, both of which relations are highly confidential.

Many writers on morals have laid down the position, that,where a perfect and an imperfect obligation clash, the perfectobligation is to be preferred. For this opinion, however, thereseems to be no good reason, —the terms perfect and imperfect,cannot justify such a distinction. The distinction between du-ties of perfect and imperfect obligation, is a legal and technical,rather than a moral distinction. The former may be enforcedby law, the latter must be left to the conscience of each indi-vidual. The moral philosopher looks at them both from thesame elevated point of view. The specific performance, there-fore, of promises' of every kind, so far as they are binding at all,is a perfect obligation. For, as the reason of the rule applies toall obligations, imperfect as well as perfect, the rule, that promisesare void where the performance is immoral, extends to imper-fect as much as to perfect obligations. Thus, if you promise aman your vote, and, between the time of promise and perform-ance, he renders himself unfit to receive it, you are absolvedfrom the obligation of your promise. Or if it be a case, inwhich you are bound, by oath or other obligation, to governyourself by the qualifications of the candidates, and a candidate ofhigher qualifications appears, the promise must be broken through.*

If the matter of a promise is impossible or immoral at thetime of making it, but the circumstances are such as may bechanged, and a change in the promiser’s circumstances mayrender it possible, or consistent with good morals, for him toperform his promise at some time hereafter, it is binding. Themeaning of the promiser at the time must have been this, —that he would give the thing or do the act promised, wheneverit should be in his power, or whenever, by any change in hiscircumstances, it should become consistent with good morals.The obligation of such promises, in the mean time, is in suspense,but is revived when the event happens which renders the per-formance of them possible or moral.f

* Paley’s Moral and Political Philosophy, p. 76- 79,\ Kutherforth’s Institutes of Natural Law, p. 91.