Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/317

Rh morals, fines, shame, necessity of concealment, public infamy, expulsion from home and society, and in fine all such punishments as belong to a corrective jurisdiction, are sufficient to repress the temerity of the two sexes. In effect, these things are less founded on malice, than on oblivion and self contempt.

We speak here of none but crimes that relate merely to morals, for as to those that are also prejudicial to the public security, such as rapes and ravishments, they belong to the fourth species.

The crimes of the third class are those that disturb the public tranquillity. The punishments ought therefore to be derived from the nature of the thing, and to be relative to this tranquillity; such as imprisonment, exile, corrections, and other-like chastisements, proper for reclaiming turbulent spirits, and reducing them to the established order.

I confine those crimes that injure the public tranquillity to things that imply a simple transgression against the civil administration: for as to those which by disturbing the public tranquillity attack at the same time the security of the subject, they ought to be ranked in the fourth class.

The punishments inflicted upon the latter crimes are such as are properly distinguished by that name. They are a kind of retaliation, by which the society refuses security to a member, who has actually or intentionally deprived another of his security. These punishments are derived from the nature of the thing, founded on reason, and drawn from the very source of good and evil. A man deserves death when he has violated the secunty so far as to deprive, or to attempt to deprive another man of his like. This punishment of death is the remedy, as it Rh