Much of my personal motivation for letting new nations bloom is the desire to live in a society whose rules are aligned with my morality. I have an intuition that our enormous mismatch between morality and legality is a bad thing, that it causes moral rot and corruption and makes for an unhealthy culture. I am used to thinking of law-breaking as a good thing, because I disagree with the majority of laws, but wouldn’t it be far better to live in a world where every person didn’t need to find their own internal moral compass?

This is fuzzy and hard to quantify, and because I have no experience with a moral society, it is hard to be sure whether my intuition is right. But John Locke seems to agree with me. In his piece Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising the Value of Money, he says:

I fear I may reckon it as one of the probable Consequences of such a Law, That it is likely to cause great Perjury in the Nation; a Crime, than which nothing is more carefully to be prevented by Lawmakers, not only by Penalties, that shall attend apparent and proved Perjury; but by avoiding and lessening, as much as may be, the Temptations to it. For where those are strong, (as they are where Men shall Swear for their own Advantage) there the fear of Penalties to follow will have little Restraint; especially if the Crime be hard to be proved.All which I suppose will happen in this Case, where ways will be found out to receive Money upon other Pretences than for Use, to evade the Rule and Rigour of the Law: And there will be secret Trusts and Collusions amongst Men, that though they may be suspected, can never be proved without their own Confession.

I have heard very sober and observing Persons complain of the Danger Mens Lives and Properties are in, by the frequency and fashionableness of Perjury amongst us. Faith and Truth, especially in all Occasions of attesting it upon the solemn Appeal to Heaven by an Oath, is the great Bond of Society: This it becomes the Wisdom of Magistrates carefully to support, and render as sacred and awful in the Minds of the People as they can. But if ever Frequency of Oaths shall make them be looked on as Formalities of Law, or the Custom of straining of Truth (which Mens Swearing in their own Cases is apt to lead them to) has once dipt Men in Perjury, and the Guilt with the Temptation has spread it self very wide, and made it almost fashionable in some Cases, it will be impossible for the Society (these Bonds being dissolved) to subsist: All must break in Pieces, and run to Confusion.

That Swearing in their own Case is apt, by degrees to lead Men into as little Regard of such Oaths, as they have of their ordinary Talk, I think there is reason to suspect, from what has been observed in something of that kind, Masters of. Ships are a sort of Men generally Industrious and Sober, and I suppose may be thought, for their Number and Rank, to be equally Honest to any other sort of Men: And yet, by the Discourse I have had with Merchants in other Countries, I find, That they think in those Parts, they take a great Liberty in their Custom-house Oaths, to that degree, that I remember I was once told, in a Trading Town beyond Sea, of a Master of a Vessel, there esteemed a sober and fair Man, who yet could not hold saying, God forbid that a Custom-house Oath should be a Sin.

I say not this, to make any Reflection upon a sort of Men, that I think as uncorrupt as any other; and who, I am sure, ought in England to be cherished and esteem’d as the most industrious and most beneficial of any of its Subjects. But I could not forbear to give this here as an Instance, how dangerous a Temptation it is, to bring Men customarily to Swear, where they may have any Concernment of their own.

And it will always be worthy the Care and Consideration of Law-makers, to keep up the Opinion of an Oath High and Sacred, as it ought to be, in the Minds of the People; which can never be done, where frequency of Oaths, biassed by Interest, has establisht a neglect of them; and Fashion (which it seldom fails to do) has given Countenance to what Profit rewards.