Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (Foote).djvu/69

 use of those to whom threatening punishment is a necessary cause of forbearing to do a crime. It is also of use to society to inflict punishments on men for doing what they cannot avoid doing, to the end that necessary causes may exist to form the wills of those who in virtue of them necessarily observe the laws, and also of use to cut them off as noxious members of society.

2. But secondly, so far is threatening and inflicting punishments from being useless, if men are necessary agents, that it would be useless to correct and deter (which are the principal effects designed to be obtained by threatening and inflicting punishments) unless men were necessary agents, and were determined by pleasure and pain; because if men were free or indifferent to pleasure and pain, pain could be no motive to cause men to observe the law.

3. Thirdly, men have every day examples before them of the usefulness of punishments upon some intelligent or sensible beings, which they all contend are necessary agents. They punish dogs, horses, and other animals every day with great success, and make them leave off their vicious habits, and form them thereby according to their wills. These are plain facts, and matters of constant experience, and even confirmed by the evasions of the advocates of Liberty, who call the rewards and punishments used to brute beasts analogical; and say that beating them and giving them victuals have only the shadow of rewards and punishments. Nor are capital punishments without their use among beasts and birds. Rorarius tells us that they crucify lions in Africa to drive away other lions from their cities and towns; and that travelling through the country of Juliers, he observed they hanged up wolves to secure their flocks. And in like manner with us, men hang up crows and rooks to keep birds from their