But in
these cases the alternative is offered to every man; "either abstain
from this, or submit to such a penalty;" and his conscience will be
clear, whichever side of the alternative he thinks proper to embrace.
Thus, by the statutes for preserving the game, a penalty is denounced
against every unqualified person that kills a hare. Now this
prohibitory law does not make the transgression a moral offence: the
only obligation in conscience is to submit to the penalty if levied.

I HAVE now gone through the definition laid down of a municipal law;
and have shewn that it is "a rule--of civil conduct--prescribed--by
the supreme power in a state--commanding what is right, and
prohibiting what is wrong:" in the explication of which I have
endeavoured to interweave a few useful principles, concerning the
nature of civil government, and the obligation of human laws. Before I
conclude this section, it may not be amiss to add a few observations
concerning the _interpretation_ of laws.

WHEN any doubt arose upon the construction of the Roman laws, the
usage was to state the case to the emperor in writing, and take his
opinion upon it. This was certainly a bad method of interpretation. To
interrogate the legislature to decide particular disputes, is not only
endless, but affords great room for partiality and oppression. The
answers of the emperor were called his rescripts, and these had in
succeeding cases the force of perpetual laws; though they ought to be
carefully distinguished, by every rational civilian, from those
general constitutions, which had only the nature of things for their
guide. The emperor Macrinus, as his historian Capitolinus informs us,
had once resolved to abolish these rescripts, and retain only the
general edicts; he could not bear that the hasty and crude answers of
such princes as Commodus and Caracalla should be reverenced as laws.
But Justinian thought otherwise[k], and he has preserved them all. In
like manner the canon laws, or decretal epistles of the popes, are all
of them rescripts in the strictest sense. Contrary to all true forms
of reasoning, they argue from particulars to generals.

[Footnote k: _Inst._ 1. 2. 6.]

THE fairest and most rational method to interpret the will of the
legislator, is by exploring his intentions at the time when the law
was made, by _signs_ the most natural and probable. And these signs
are either the words, the context, the subject matter, the effects and
conseq