Page:Sphere and Duties of Government.djvu/179

159 and passions prompting to crime make use of. But if this principle be otherwise interpreted; if it is supposed that severe punishments should always be opposed to crimes in proportion as circumstances of time and locality render them more frequent, or, still more (as in the case of so many police crimes), in proportion as, from their very nature, they are less impressively resisted by moral reasons, then the scale would be at once unjust and hurtful. It would be unjust. For as it is exact to suppose the prevention of future injuries to be the end of all punishment,—at least in so far as never to allow a punishment to be inflicted with any other design,—so the necessity for the punished one to undergo the punishment arises strictly from this, that every one must submit to infringement of his own rights exactly in that proportion in which he has violated the rights of others. Not only without the political union, but also within it, does the obligation rest on this position. For to derive it from a mutual contract is not only useless, but is also attended with this difficulty,—that capital punishment, for example, which is clearly necessary at some times and in certain local circumstances, could not be justified with such a supposition, and that every criminal could escape his punishment if before undergoing it he separated himself from the social contract; as we see, for instance, in the voluntary exile of the ancient republics, which however, if my memory does not mislead me, was only admitted in cases of political and not private crimes. To him, therefore, who has inflicted the injury, no discussion as regards the efficiency of the punishment can be allowed; and, however certain that the party injured would have no new injury to apprehend from him, he must still acknowledge the justice of the punishment. But it follows also, on the other hand, from this same principle, that he may justly resist every punishment exceeding the measure of his crime, however