 In The Treatise she also puts forward her objections to all those theories of the source of moral injunctions, which, like Bolingbroke’s account, attempt to reduce them to rules which are in our rational self-interest, arguing that “… those who only regard virtue as a principle, convenient for general use, will discard it whenever that general interest comes in opposition to self” (Macaulay 1783, 77). Against such views she argues that the genuine rational interest of a rational being is to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. Had God intended us simply to maximise our own selfish pleasures in this life, he would have given us appropriate instincts, for