Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (Foote).djvu/68

 not? doth it not frame their wills to justice? Whereas a criminal who is an involuntary agent (as for instance a man who has killed another in a chance medly, or while in a fever or the like) cannot serve for an example to deter any others from doing the same, he being no more an intelligent agent in doing the crime than a house is which kills a man by its fall, and by consequence the punishment of such an involuntary agent would be unjust. When therefore a man does a crime voluntarily, and his punishment will serve to deter others from doing the same, he is justly punished for doing what (through strength of temptation, ill habits, or other causes) he could not avoid doing.

It may not be improper to add this farther consideration from the law of our country. There is one case wherein our law is so far from requiring that the persons punished should be free agents, that it does not consider them as voluntary agents, or even as guilty of the crime for which they suffer: so little is free agency requisite to make punishments just. The children of rebel parents suffer in their fortunes for the guilt of their parents, and their punishment is deemed just, because it is supposed to be a means to prevent rebellion in parents.

II. Secondly, it is objected that it is useless to threaten punishment, or inflict it on men to prevent crimes, when they are necessarily determined in all their actions. 1. To which I answer first, that threatening of punishments is a cause which necessarily determines some men’s wills to a conformity to law, and against committing the crimes to which punishments are annexed, and therefore is useful to all those whose wills must be determined by it. It is as useful to such men, as the sun is to the ripening the fruits of the earth, or as any other causes are to produce their proper effects, and a man may as well say the sun is useless, if the ripening the fruits of the earth be necessary, as say there is no need of threatening punishment for the