74.In the House of Commons itself,is it by the opulent and independent Country gentlemen that the chief business of the House is transacted,or by aspiring,and perhaps needy Courtiers?The man who would persevere in the toil of Government,without any other reward than the favour of the people,is certainly the man for the people to make choice of.But such men are at best but rare.Were it not for those children of Corruption we have been speaking of,the business of the state,I doubt,would stagnate.
75.It is what he says of Theology with respect to the SciencesV.Augm.Scient.L.VIII.c.III,p.97.
76.V.supra.
77.Which is done without any sort of ceremony,the quantities marked in the step with the negative sign,being as so many fluents,which are at a maximum,or a minimum,just as happens to be most convenient.
78.V.supra,par.7.
79.One thing in the paragraph we are considering is observable;it is the concluding sentence,in which he brings together the ideas of law and will.Here then,in the tail of a digression,becomes nearer in fact,though without being aware of it,to the giving a just and precise idea of a law,than in any part of the definition itself from whence he is digressing.If,instead of saying that a law is a will,he had called it the expression of a will,and that sort of expression of a will which goes by the name of a command,his definition would,so far as this goes,have been clear as well as right.As it is,it is neither the one nor the other.But of this more,if at all,in another place.The definition of law is a matter of too much nicety and importance to be dispatched in a note.
80.I Comm.p.47.
81.1Comm.p.48,supra,ch.II.par.11.