r be mine; then,
there is no sanction in reason, conscience or law for the conduct of
those who run immediately to the first charitable institution and leave
there their conscience money; or who have masses said for the repose of
the souls of those who have been defrauded, before they are dead at all
perhaps. My first care must be to locate the victim; or, if he be
certainly deceased or evidently beyond reach, the heirs of the victim
of my fraud. When all means fail and I am unable to find either the
owner or his heirs, then, and not till then, may I dispose of the goods
in question. I must assume in such a contingency as this, that the will
of the owner would be to expend the sum on the most worthy cause; and
that is charity. The only choice then that remains with me is, what
hospital, asylum or other enterprise of charity is to profit by my
sins, since I myself cannot be a gainer in the premises.

It might be well to remark here that one is not obliged to make
restitution for more than the damages call for. Earnestness is a good
sign, but it should not blind us or drive us to an excess of zeal
detrimental to our own lawful interests. When there is a reasonable and
insolvable doubt as to the amount of reparation to be made, it is just
that such a doubt favor us. If we are not sure if it be a little more
or a little less, the value we are to refund, we may benefit by the
uncertainty and make the burden we assume as light as in all reason it
can be made. And even if we should happen to err on the side of mercy
to ourselves, without our fault, justice is satisfied, being fallible
like all things human.

CHAPTER XCVIII.
WHAT EXCUSES FROM RESTITUTION.

THOSE who do not obtain full justice from man in this world will obtain
it in the next from God. If we do not meet our obligations this side of
the tribunal of the just Judge, He will see to it that our accounts are
equitably balanced when the time for the final reckoning comes. This
supposes, naturally, that non-fulfilment of obligations is due on our
part to unwillingness--a positive refusal, or its equivalent, wilful
neglect, to undo the wrongs committed. For right reason and God's mercy
must recognize the existence of a state of unfeigned and hopeless
disability, when it is impossible for the delinquent to furnish the
wherewithal to repair the evils of which he has been guilty. When this
condition is permanent, and is beyond all remedy, all claims are
extinguished