Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (3rd ed., 1735).djvu/84

 to be necessary agents, are in many places of the world, either the objects of judicial punishments, or be allow’d to be dispatch’d by private men. Nay, even men infected with the plague, who are not voluntary agents and are guilty of no crime, are sometimes thought to be justly cut off from society, to prevent contagion from them. Secondly, let punishments be inflicted on some criminals with a view to terrify, it will appear that in inflicting punishments with that view, no regard is had to any free-agency in man, in order to make those punishments just. To render the punishment of such men just, it is sufficient that they were voluntary agents, or had the will to do the crime for which they suffer for the law very justly and rightly regardeth only the will, and no other preceding causes of action. For example, suppose the law on pain of death forbids theft, and there be a man who by the strength of temptation is necessitated to steal, and is thereupon put to death for it; doth not his punishment deter others from theft? Is it not a cause, that others steal not? Doth it not frame their wills