usurpation, and wrongful investment, of sovereign trust, with the offences accessary thereto. Where the trust is in a single person, wrongful interception, Avrongful divestment, usurpation, and wrongful investment, cannot any of them, be committed without rebellion; abdication and detrectation can never be deemed wrongful; breach and abuse of sovereign trust can scarcely be punished: no more can bribe-taking: wrongful imposition of it is scarce practicable. When the sovereignty is shared among a number, wrongful interception, wrongful divestment, usurpation, and wrongful investment, may be committed without rebellion: none of the offences against this trust are impracticable: nor is there any of them but might be punished. Defensive rebellion is disturbance of this trust. Political tumults, political defamation, and political vilification, are offences accessory to such disturbance. Sovereign power (which, upon the principle of utility, can never be other than fiduciary) is exercised either by rule or without rule: in the latter case it may be termed autocratic: in the former case it is divided into two branches, the legislative &Tid the executive*. In either case, where the designation of the person by whom the power is to be possessed, depends not solely upon mere physical events, such as that of natural succession, but in any sort upon the will of another person, the latter possesses an ivestitive power, or right of investiture, with regard to the power in question: in like manner may any person also possess a divestitive power. The powers above enumerated, such as judicial power, military power, and so forth, may therefore be exerciseable by a * See cli. xvii, [Limits] § iii.
What the materials are, if so they may be <^ called, of which conditions, or any other kind of man, either directly, proprid manu; or indirectly, manu aliend *. Power to be exercised manu aliend is investitive, which may or may not be accompanied by divestitive. Of sovereign power, whether autocratic, legislative, or executive, the several public trusts above-mentioned form so many subordinate branches. Any of these powers may be placed, either, 1. in an individual; or, 2. in a body politic: who may be either supreme or subordinate. Subordination on the part of a magistrate may be established, 1. By the person's being punishable: 2. By his being removeable: 3. By the orders being reversible.
X. Offences against religion. 1. Offences tending to weaken the force of the religious sanction: including blasphemy and profaneness. "2. Offences tending to misapply the force of the religious sanction: including false prophecies, and other pretended revelations; also heresy, where the doctrine broached is pernicious to the temporal interests of the community. 3. Offences against religious trust, where any such is thought fit to be established.
XI. Offences against the national interest in general. 1. Immoral publications. 2. Offences against the trust of an ambassador; or, as it might be termed, presbeutic trust. 3. Offences against the trust of a privy-counsellor; or, as it might be termed, smybouleutic trust. 4. In pure or mixed monarchies, prodigality on the part of persons who are about the person of the sovereign, though without being invested with any specific trust. 5. Excessive gaming on the part of the same persons. 6. Taking presents from rival powers without leave.
* In tlie former case, the power might be termed in oii^' word, autochirous: in the latter, heterochirons: (kuto;, a man's own; x^'P> ^ ''^"'^ ' '^epof another's.)
HAP.
XVI.
HAP.
XVI.
Chap, legal possessioii, can be made up, we have already ' — V — ' seen: beneficial powers, fiduciary powers, beneficial rights, fiduciary rights, relative duties, absolute duties. But as many conditions as import a power or right of the fiduciary kind, as possessed by the person whose condition is in question, belong to the head of trusts. The catalogue of the offences to which these conditions are exposed, coincides therefore exactly with the catalogue of offences against trust: under which head they have been considered in a general point of view under the head of offences against trust: and such of them as are of a domestic nature, in a more particular manner in the character of offences against the several domestic conditions. Conditions constituted by such duties of the relative kind, as have for their counterparts trusts constituted by fiduciary powers, as well as rights on the side of the correlative party, and those of a private nature, have also been already discussed under the appellation of domestic conditions. The same observation may be applied to the conditions constituted by such powers of the beneficial kind over persons as are of a private nature: as also to the subordinate correlative conditions constituted by the duties corresponding to those rights and powers. iVs to absolute duties, there is no instance of a condition thus created, of which the institution is upon the principle of utility to be justified; unless the several religious conditions of the monastic kind should be allowed C"^^^-of as examples. There remain, as the only ma- ' v — terials out of which the conditions which yet remain to be considered can be composed, conditions constituted by beneficial powers over things; conditions constituted by beneficial rights to things (that is, rights to powers over things) or by rights to those rights, and so on; conditions constituted by rights to services; and conditions constituted by the duties corresponding to those respective rights. Out of these are to be taken those of which the materials are the ingredients of the several modifications of property, the several conditions of proprietorship. These are the conditions, if such for a moment they may be stiled, which ' having but here and there any specific names, are not commonly considered on the footing of conditions: so that the acts which, if such conditions were recognized, might be considered as offences against those conditions, are not wont to be considered in any other light than that of offences against property.
Now the case is, as hath been already intimated*, that of these civil conditions, those which are wont to be considered under that name, are not distinguished by any uniform and explicit line from those of which the materials are wont Supra, xvii.
Chap, to be Carried to the head of property: a set of '■ — V — ' rights shall, in one instance, be considered as constituting an article of property rather than a condition: while, in another instance, a set of rights of the same stamp is considered as constituting rather a condition than an article of property. This will probably be found to be the case in all languages: and the usage is different again in one language from what it is in another. From these causes it seems to be impracticable to subject the class of civil conditions to any exhaustive method: so that for making a complete collection of them there seems to be no other expedient than that of searching the language through for them, and taking them as they come. To exemplify this observation, it may be of use to lay open the structure as it were of two or three of the principal sorts or classes of conditions, comparing them with two or three articles of property which appear to be nearly of the same complexion: by this means the nature and generation, if one may so call it, of both these classes of ideal objects may be the more clearly understood.
The several sorts of civil conditions that are not fiduciary may all, or at least the greater part of them, be comprehended under the head of rank, or that of profession; the latter word being taken in its most extensive sense, so as to include not only what are called the liberal professions, but those also which are exercised by the several sorts of traders, artists, manufacturers, and other Chap. persons of whatsoever station, who are in the way ' — ^rof making a profit by their labour. Among ranks then, as well as professions, let us, for the sake of perspicuity, take for examples such articles as stand the clearest from any mixture of either fiduciary or beneficial power. The rank of knighthood is constituted, how? by prohibiting all other persons from performing certain acts, the performance of which is the symbol of the order, at the same time that the knight in question, and his companions, are permitted: for instance, to wear a ribbon of a certain colour in a certain manner: to call himself by a certain title: to use an armorial seal with a certain mark on it. By laying all persons but the knight under this prohibition, the law subjects them to a set of duties: and since from the discharge of these duties a benefit results to the person in whose favour they are created, to wit, the benefit of enjoying such a share of extraordinary reputation and respect as men are wont to yield to a person thus distinguished, to discharge them is to render him a service: and the duty being a duty of the negative class, a duty > consisting in the performance of certain acts of the negative kind*, the ser^dce is what may be called a service of forbearance. It appears then, that to generate this condition there must be two * See ch. [Actions] viii.
sorts of services: that which is the immediate cause of it, a service of the negative kind, to be rendered by the community at large: that which is the cause again of this service, a service of the positive kind, to be rendered by the law.
The condition of a professional man stands upon a narrower footing. To constitute this condition there needs nothing more than a permission given him on the part of the legislator to perform those acts, in the performance of which consists the exercise of his profession: to give or sell his advice or assistance in matters of law or physic: to give or sell his services as employed in the executing or overseeing of a manufacture or piece of work of such or such a kind: to sell a commodity of such or such a sort. Here then we see there is but one sort of service requisite; a service which may be merely of the negative kind, to be rendered by the law: the service of permitting. him to exercise his profession: a service which, if there has been no prohibition laid on before, is rendered by simply forbearing to prohibit him.
Now the ideal objects, which in the cases above specified are said to be conferred upon a man by the services that are respectively in question, are in both cases not articles of property but conditions. By such a behaviour on the part of the law, as shall be the reverse of that whereby they were respectively produced, a man may be made to forfeit them: and what he is then said to forfeit is in neither case his property; but in one case? Chai.. his rank or dignity: in the other case, his trade ^ — v — ' or his profession: and in both cases, his condition. Other cases there are again in which the law, by a process of the same sort with that by which it constituted the former of the two above-mentioned conditions, confers on him an ideal object, which the laws of language have placed under the head of property. The law permits a man to sell books: that is, all sorts of books in general. Thus far all that it has done is to invest him with a condition: and this condition he would equally possess, although every body else in the world were to sell books likewise. Let the law now take an active part in his favour, and prohibit all other persons from selling books of a certain description, he remaining at liberty to sell them as before. It thereby confers on him a sort of exclusive privilege or monopoly, which is called a copy-right. But by investing him with this right, it is not said to invest him with any new sort of condition; and what it invests him with is spoken of as an article of property; to wit, of that sort of property which is termed incorporeal *: and so * The reason probably why an object of the sort here in question is referred to the head of property, is, that the chief value of it arises from its being capable of being made a source of property in the more ordinary acceptations of the word; that is, of money, consumable commodities, and so forth.
208 DIVISION OF OFFENCES on in the case of an engraving, a mechanical engine, a medicine; or, in short, of a saleable article of any other sort. Yet when it gave him an exclusive right of wearing a particular sort of ribbon, the object which it was then considered as conferring on him was not an article of property but a condition.
By forbearing to subject you to certain disadvantages, to which it subjects an alien, the law confers on you the condition of a natural-born subject: by subjecting him to them, it imposes on him the condition of an alien: by conferring on you certain privileges or rights, which it denies to a roturkr, the law confers on you the condition of a gcutilhomme; by forbearing to confer on him those privileges, it imposes on him the condition of a roturier *. The rights, out of which the two advantageous conditions here exemplified are both of them as it were composed, have for their counterpart a sort of services of forbearance, rendered, as we have seen, not by private individuals, but by the law itself As to the duties which it creates in rendering you these services, they are to be considered as duties imposed by the legislator on the ministers of justice.
* The conditions themselves having nothing that corresponds to them in England, it was necessary to make use of foreign terms.
DIVISION OF OFFENCES. ' '^<^^ It may be observed, with regard to the greater Chap. part of the conditions here comprised under the ' — v — ' general appellation of civil, that the relations corresponding to those by which they are respectively constituted, are not provided with appellatives. The relation which has a name, is that which is borne by the party favoured to the party bound: that which is borne by the party bound to the party favoured has not any. This is a circumstance that may help to distinguish them from those conditions which we have termed domestic. In the domestic conditions, if on the one side the party to whom the power is given is called a master; on the other side, the party over whom that power is given, the party who is the object of that power, is termed a servant. In the civil conditions this is not the case. On the one side, a man, in virtue of certain services of forbearance, which the rest of the community are bound to render him, is denominated a knight of such or such an order: but on the other side, these services do not bestow any particular denomination on the persons from whom such services are due. Another man, in virtue of the legislator's rendering that sort of negative service which consists in the not prohibiting him from exercising a trade, invests him at his option with the condition of a trader: it accordingly denominates him a farmer, a baker, a weaver, and so on: but the ministers of the law do not, in virtue of their rendering tlie ^"^^- man this sort of negative service, acquire for — ^ — ' themselves any particular name. Suppose even that the trade you have the right of exercising happens to be the object of a monopoly, and that the legislator, besides rendering you himself those services which you derive from the permission he bestows on you, obliges other persons to render you those farther services which you receive from their forbearing to follow the same trade; yet neither do they, in virtue of their being thus bound, acquire any particular name.
After what has been said of the nature of the several sorts of civil conditions that have names, the offences to which they are exposed may, without much difficulty, be imagined. Taken by itself, every condition which is thus constituted by a permission granted to the possessor, is of course of a beneficial nature: it is, therefore, exposed to all those offences to which the possession of a benefit is exposed. But either on account of a man's being obliged to persevere when once engaged in it, or on account of such other obligations as may stand annexed to the possession of it, or on account of the comparative degree of disrepute which may stand annexed to it by the moral sanction, it may by accident be a burthen: it is on this account liable to stand exposed to the offences to which, as hath been seen, every thing that partakes of the nature of a burthen stands exposed. As to any offences which may concern DIVISION OF OFFENCES. ^H the exercise of the functions belonging to it, if it Ch_»p. happens to have any duties annexed to it, such as ' — v — ' those, for instance, which are constituted by regulations touching the exercise of a trade, it will stand exposed to so many breaches of duty; and lastly, whatsoever are the functions belonging to it, it will stand exposed at any rate to disturbance.
In the forming however of the catalogue of these offences, exactness is of the less consequence, inasmuch as an act, if it should happen not to be comprised in this catalogue, and yet is in any respect of a pernicious nature, will be sure to be found in some other division of the system of offences: if a baker sells bad bread for the price of good, it is a kind of fraud upon the buyer; and perhaps an injury of the simple corporal kind done to the health of an individual, or a neighbourhood: if a clothier sells bad cloth for good at home, it is a fraud; if to foreigners abroad, it may, over and above the fraud put upon the foreign purchaser, have pernicious effects perhaps in the prosperity of the trade at home, and become thereby an offence against the national wealth. So again with regard to disturbance: if a man be disturbed in the exercise of his trade, the offence will probably be a wrongful interception of the projit he might be presumed to have been in a way to make by it: and were it even to appear in any case that a man exercised a trade.
■^^'^ DIVISION OF OFFENCES.
Chap. XVI.
or what is less unlikely, a liberal profession, without having profit in his view, the offence will still be reducible to the head of simple injin'tous restra'mment, or simple injurious compulsion.
§ 4. Advantages of the present method.
LVI.
Geneial idea of llie A few words, for the purpose of giving a general method here yjg^ of the uiethod of divisiou here pursued, and pursued ^ ' of the advantages which it possesses, may have their use. The whole system of offences, we may observe, is branched out into five classes. In the three first, the subordinate divisions are taken from the same source; viz. from the consideration of the different points, in respect whereof the interest of an individual is exposed to suffer. By this uniformity, a considerable degree of light seems to be thrown upon the whole system; particularly upon the offences that come under the third class: objects which have never hitherto been brought into any sort of order. With regard to the fourth class, in settling the precedence between its several subordinate divisions, it seemed most natural and satisfactory to place those first, the connection whereof with the welfare of individuals seemed most obvious and immediate. The mischievous effects of those offences, which tend in an immediate way to deprive individuals of the protection provided for them against the attacks of one another, and of those which tend to bring down upon them the attacks of foreign assailants, seem alike obvious and palpable. The mischievous quality of such as tend to weaken the force that is provided to combat those attacks, but particularly the latter, though evident enough, is one link farther off in the chain of causes and effects. The ill effects of such offences as are of disservice only by diminishing the particular fund from whence that force is to be extracted, such effects, I say, though indisputable, are still more distant and out of sight. The same thing may be observed with regard to such as are mischievous only by affecting the universal fund. Offences against the sovereignty in general would not be mischievous, if offences of the several descriptions preceding were not mischievous. Nor in a temporal view are offences against religion mischievous, except in as far as, by removing, or weakening, or misapplying one of the three great incentives to virtue, and checks to vice, they tend to open the door to the several mischiefs, which it is the nature of all those other offences to produce. As to the fifth class, this, as hath already been observed, exhibits, at first view, an irregularity, which however seems to be unavoidable. But this irregularity is presently corrected, when the analysis returns back, as it does after a step or two, into the path from which the tyranny of language had forced it a while to deviate.
It was necessary that it should have two pur-.
poses in view: the one, to exhibit, upon a scale more or less minute, a systematical enumeration of the several possible modifications of delinquency, denominated or undenominated; the other, to find places in the list for such names of offences as were in current use: for the first purpose, nature was to set the law; for the other, custom. Had the nature of the things themselves been the only guide, every such difference in the manner of perpetration, and such only, should have served as a ground for a different denomination, as was attended with a difference in point of effect. This however of itself would never have been sufficient; for as on one hand the new language, which it would have been necessary to invent, would have been uncouth, and in a manner unintelligible: so on the other hand the names, which were before in current use, and which, in spite of all systems, good or bad, must have remained in current use, would have continued unexplained. To have adhered exclusively to the current language, would have been as bad on the other side; for in that case the catalogue of offences, when compared to that of the mischiefs that are capable of being produced, would have been altogether broken and uncomplete.
To reconcile these two objects, in as far as they seemed to be reconcileable, the following course has therefore been pursued. The logical whole, constituted by the sum total of possible offences.
has been bisected in as many different directions as were necessary, and the process in each direction carried down to that stage at which the particular ideas thus divided found names in current use in readiness to receive them. At that period I have stopped; leaving any minuter distinctions to be enumerated in the body of the work, as so many species of the genus characterized by such or such a name. If in the course of any such process I came to a mode of conduct which, though it required to be taken notice of, and perhaps had actually been taken notice of, under all laws, in the character of an offence, had hitherto been expressed under different laws, by different circumlocutions, without ever having received any name capable of occupying the place of a substantive in a sentence. I have frequently ventured so far as to fabricate a new name for it, such an one as the idiom of the language, and the acquaintance I happened to have with it, would admit of. These names consisting in most instances, and that unavoidably, of two or three words brought together, in a language too which admits not, like the German and the Greek, of their being melted into one, can never be upon a par, in point of commodiousness, with those univocal appellatives which make part of the established stock.
In the choice of names in current use, care has been taken to avoid all such as have been grounded on local distinctions, ill founded, perhaps, in the '^^^ Division of offences.
Chap.
XVI.
nation in which they received their birth^, and at ' '" ' any rate not applicable to the circumstances of other countries.
The analysis, as far as it goes, is as applicable to the legal concerns of one country as of another: and where, if it had descended into further details, it would have ceased to be so, there I have taken care always to stop: and thence it is that it has come to be so much more particular in the class of offences against individuals, than in any of the other classes. One use then of this arrangement, if it should be found to have been properly conducted, will be its serving to point out in what it is that the legal interests of all countries agree, and in what it is that they are liable to differ: how far a rule that is proper for one, will serve, and how far it will not serve, for another. That the legal interests of different ages and countries have nothing in common, and they have every thing, are suppositions equally distant from the truth *.
LVII.
lis advun- \ natural method, such as it hath been here tag<s.
*— ^- i' i' attempted to exhibit, seems to possess four capital coiiveiiicTit loi tiic i.p- advantages; not to mention others of inferior * The above hints are offered to the consideration of the few who may be disposed to bend their minds to disquisitions of this uninviting nature: to sift the matter to the bottom, and engage in the details of illustration, would require more room than could in this place be consistently allowed.
note. In the first place, it affords such assistance <^^kap. to the apprehension and to the memor}', as those ^""v— ^ i A •' prehension faculties would in vain look for in any technical a"'^ ''•« "'^• arrangement *. That arrangement of the objects of any science may, it should seem, be termed a natural one, which takes such properties to characterize them by, as men in general are, by the common constitution of man's nature, independently of any accidental impressions they may have received from the influence of any local or other particular causes, accustomed to attend to: such, in a word, as uaturaUi), that is readily, and at first sight, engage, and firmly fix, the attention of any one to whom they have once been pointed out. Now by what other means should an object engage, or fix a man's attention, unless by interesting him? and what circumstance belonging to any action can be more interesting, or rather what other circumstance belonging to it can be at all interesting to him, than that of the influence it promises to have on his own happiness, and the happiness of those who are about him? By what other mark then should he more easily find the place which any offence occupies in the system, or by what other clue should he more readily recall it?
LVIII.
In the next place, it not only gives at first glance —2. ii gives a general intimation of the nature of each division m-vlx pro-^^ positions.
* See Fragment on Government, pref. p. xlv. edit. 1776. — pref. p. xlvii. edit. IS'23.
^yy^- of offences, in as far as that nature is determined ' — V — ' by some one characteristic property, but it gives room for a number of general propositions to be formed concerning the particular offences that come under that division, in such manner as to exhibit a variety of other properties that may belong to them in common. It gives room, therefore, for the framing of a number of propositions concerning them, which, though very general, because predicated of a great number of articles, shall be as generally true *.
* Imagine what a condition a science must be in> when as yet there shall be no such thing as forming any extensive proposition relative to it, that shall be at the same time a true one: where, if the proposition shall be true of some of the particulars contained under it, it shall be false with regard to others. What a state would botany, for example, be in, if the classes were so contrived, that no common characters could be found for them? Yet in this state, and no better, seems every system of penal law to be, authoritative or unauthoritative that has ever yet appeared. Try if it be otherwise, for instance, with the delicta privata et publico, and with the publica ord'maria, and publica extra-ordinaria of the Roman law f- AH this for want of method: and hence the necessity of endeavouring to strike out a new one.
Nor is this want of method to be wondered at. A science so new as that of penal legislation, could hardly have been in any better state. Till objects are distinguished, they cannot be arranged. It is thus that truth and order go on LIX. Chap.
XVI.
In the third place, it is so contrived, that the "^ — v — ' very place which any offence is made to occupy, P"'"ts out suggests the reason of its being put there. It of the law. serves to indicate not only that such and such acts are made offences, but why they ought to be. By this means, while it addresses itself to the understanding, it recommends itself, in some measure, to the affections. By the intimation it gives of the nature and tendency of each obnoxious act, it accounts for, and in some measure vindicates, the treatment which it may be thought proper to bestow upon that act in the way of punishment. To the subject then it is a kind of perpetual apology: shewing the necessity of every defalcation, which, for. the security and prosperity of each individual, it is requisite to make from the liberty of every other. To the legislator it is a kind of perpetual lesson: serving at once as a corrective to his prejudices, and as a check upon his passions. Is there a mischief hand in hand. It is only in proportion as the former is discovered, that the latter can be improved. Before a certain order is established, truth can be but imperfectly announced: but until a certain proportion of truth has been developed and brought to light, that order cannot be established. The discovery of truth leads to the establishment of order: and the establishment of order fixes and propagates the discovery of truth.
CirAP. which has escaped him? in a natural arrange-^ — >" — ' ment, if at the same time an exhaustive one, he cannot fail to find it. Is he tempted ever to force innocence within the pale of guilt? the difficulty of finding a place for it advertises him of his error. Such are the uses of a map of universal delinquency, laid down upon the principle of utility: such the advantages, which the legislator as well as the subject may derive from it. Abide by it, and every thing that is arbitrary * in legislation, vanishes. An evil-intentioned or prejudiced legislator durst not look it in the face. He would proscribe it, and with reason: it would be a satire on his laws.
LX.
~^- ^' '*,. In the fourth place, a natural arrangement, alike appli- r ' o cable to the governed as it is by a principle which is recognations. nizcd by all men, will serve alike for the jurisprudence of all nations. In a system of proposed law, framed in pursuance of such a method, the language will serve as a glossary by which all systems of positive law might be explained, while the matter serves as a standard by which they might be tried. Thus illustrated, the practice of every nation might be a lesson to every other: and mankind might carry on a mutual interchange of experiences and improvements as easily in this as in every other walk of science. If any one of these objects should in any degree be DIVISION OF OFFENCES. ^^1 attained, the labour of this analysis, severe as it ^xvf. has been, will not have been thrown away. ' ^ §5. Characters of the Jive classes.
LXI.
It has been mentioned as an advantage pos- ciiaracters sessed by this method, and not possessed by any classes, how other, that the objects comprized under it are fro.n rte^ cast into groupes, to which a variety of proposi- ^ho^cT "* tions may be applied in common. A collection of these propositions, as applied to the several classes, may be considered as exhibiting the distinctive characters of each class. So many of these propositions as can be applied to the offences belonging to any given class, so many properties are they found to have in common: so many of these common properties as may respectively be attributed to them, so many properties may be set down to serve as characters of the class. A collection of these characters it may here be proper to exhibit. The more of them we can bring together, the more clearly and fully will the nature of the several classes, and of the offences they are composed of, be understood.
LXII.
Characters of Class 1; composed of private of- Characters fences, or offences against assignable individuals. 1. When arrived at their last stage (the stage of consummation*) they produce, all of them, a primary mischief as well as a secondary f.
2. The indivduals whom they affect in the first instance J, are constantly assignable. This extends to all; to attempts and preparations, as well as to such as have arrived at the stage of consummation §.
3. Consequently they admit of compensation\\: in which they differ from the offences of all the other classes, as such.
4. They admit ^ also oi retaliation**', in which also they differ from the offences of all the other classes.
5. There is always some person who has a natural and peculiar interest to prosecute them. In this they differ from self-regarding offences: also from semi-public and public ones; except in as far as the two latter may chance to involve a private mischief.
* Ch. vii. [Actions] xiv.
t See ch. xii- [Consequences] iii- X [First Instance.] That is, by their primary mischief.
§ See supra, and B. I. tit. [Accessory offences.]
II See ch. xiii. [Cases unmeet] ii. note.
If [Admit.] I mean, that retaliation is capable of being applied in the cases in question; not that it ought always to be employed. Nor is it capable of being applied in every individual instance of each offence, but only in some individual instance of each species of offence.
** See ch. xv, [Properties] viii.
DIVISION OF OFFENCES. 22S 6. The mischief they produce is obvious: more Chap.
so than that of semi-public offences: and still ' — v — ' more so than that of self-regarding ones, or even public.
7. They are every where, and must ever be, obnoxious to the censure of the world: more so than semi-public offences as such; and still more so than public ones.
8. They are more constantly obnoxious to the censure of the world than self-regarding offences: and would be so universally, were it not for the »-influence of the two false principles; the principle of asceticism, and the principle of antipathy *.
9. They are less apt than semi-public and public offences to require different descriptions f in different states and countries: in which respect they are much upon a par with self-regarding ones.
10. By certain circumstances of aggravation, they are liable to be transformed into semi-public offences: and by certain others, into public.
1 1. There can be no ground for punishing them, until they can be proved to have occa- * Ch. ii. [Principles adverse.]
t [Different descriptions.] It seems to be from their possessing these three last properties, that the custom has arisen of speaking of them, or at least of many of them, under the name of offences against the law of nature: a vague expression, and productive of a multitude of inconveniences. See ch. ii. [Principles adverse.]. ' ''2'24 DIVISION OF OFFENCES.