The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Errata—vol. I.
• General Preface.
• Introduction to the Study of the Works of Jeremy Bentham;
• Section I.: Bentham’s Style and Method of Thinking.
• Section II.: The Greatest-happiness Principle and Its Application to Morals and Legislation.
• Section III.: The Pursuit of Truth.—fallacies.—principles of Evidence.
• Section IV.: System of Government.
• Section IV.: Law Reform.
• Section VI.: Principles of Punishment.
• Section VII.: Poor Laws, Education, and Other Institutions For National Amelioration.
• Section VIII.: International Law.
• Section IX.: Political Economy.
• Section X.: Logic and Metaphysics. †
• An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.
• Preface.
• Chapter I.: Of the Principle of Utility.
• Chapter II.: Of Principles Adverse to That of Utility.
• Chapter III.: Of the Four * Sanctions Or Sources of Pain and Pleasure.
• Chapter IV.: Value of a Lot of Pleasure Or Pain, How to Be Measured.
• Chapter V.: Pleasures and Pains, Their Kinds.
• Chapter VI.: Of Circumstances Influencing Sensibility.
• Chapter VII.: Of Human Actions In General.
• Chapter VIII.: Of Intentionality.
• Chapter IX.: Of Consciousness.
• Chapter X.: Of Motives.
• Chapter XI.: Of Human Dispositions In General.
• Chapter XII.: Of the Consequences of a Mischievous Act.
• Chapter XIII. *: of Circumstances Influencing the Degree of Alarm.
• Chapter XIV.: Reasons For Considering Certain Actions As Crimes. *
• Chapter XV.: § 1. General View of Cases Unmeet For Punishment.
• Chapter XVI.: Of the Proportion Between Punishments and Offences.
• Chapter XVII.: Of the Properties to Be Given to a Lot of Punishment.
• Chapter XVIII. § 1.: Classes of Offences.
• Chapter XIX.: § 1. Limits Between Private Ethics and the Art of Legislation.
• I. Essay On the Promulgation of Laws
• Essay On the Influence of Time and Place In Matters of Legislation.
• Introduction. *
• Chapter I.: Principles to Be Followed In Trans Planting Laws.
• Chapter II.: Regard to Be Paid to Subsisting Institutions.
• Chapter III.: Rules Respecting the Method of Transplanting Laws.
• Chapter IV.: Laws Appear the Worse For Being Transplanted.
• Chapter V.: Influence of Time.
• A Table of the Springs of Action:
• A Fragment On Government;
• Preface to the First Edition, Published In 1776.
• Historical Preface, Intended For the Second Edition.
• Three Letters On the Fragment On Governmen
• Letter the First. of an Examination Into the Merits of a Critique On Blackstone’s Commentaries, Lately Published Under the Title of a Fragment On Government.
• Letter the Second. of an Examination Into the Merits of a Critique On Blackstone’s Commentaries, Lately Published Under the Title of a Fragment On Government.
• Letter the Third. By John Lind, Esq. Afterwards Barrister At Law, to D., Author of Two Letters * On a Fragment On Government.
• Introduction. *
• Chapter I.: Formation of Government.
• Chapter II.: Forms of Government.
• Chapter III.: The British Constitution.
• Chapter IV.: Right of the Supreme Power to Make Laws.
• Chapter V.: Duty of the Supreme Power to Make Laws.
• Principles of the Civil Code.
• Introduction.
• Part I.—: Objects of the Civil Law. *
• Chapter I.: Of Rights and Obligations.
• Chapter II.: Distinct Objects of the Civil Law.
• Chapter III.: Relation Between These Objects.
• Chapter IV.: Of Laws Relative to Subsistence.
• Chapter V.: Of Laws Relative to Abundance.
• Chapter VI.: Propositions of Pathology Upon Which the Advantage of Equality Is Founded.
• Chapter VII.: Of Security.
• Chapter VIII.: Of Property.
• Chapter IX.: Answer to an Objection.
• Chapter X.: Analysis of the Evils Resulting From Attacks Upon Property.
• Chapter XI.: Security and Equality—their Opposition.
• Chapter XII.: Security and Equality—means of Reconciliation.
• Chapter XIII.: Sacrifices of Security to Security.
• Chapter XIV.: Cases Subject to Dispute.
• Chapter XV.: Examples of Attacks Upon Security.
• Chapter XVI.: Of Forced Exchanges.
• Chapter XVII.: Power of the Laws Over Expectation.
• Part II.
• Chapter I.: Of Titles Which Confer a Right to Property. *
• Chapter II.: Another Mode of Acquisition—consent.
• Chapter III.: Another Means of Acquisition—succession.
• Chapter V.: Of Wills.
• Chapter V.: Of Rights Respecting Services—means of Acquiring Them.
• Chapter VI.: Community of Goods—its Inconveniences.
• Chapter VII.: Of Distribution of Loss.
• Part III.: Of the Rights and Obligations Attached to Different Private Conditions.
• Introduction.
• Chapter I.: Of Master and Servant.
• Chapter II.: Of Slavery.
• Chapter III.: Of Guardian and Ward.
• Chapter IV.: Of Parent and Child.
• Chapter V.: Of Marriage.
• Appendix.: of the Levelling System. *
• Principles of Penal Law.
• Part I.: Political Remedies For the Evil of Offences.
• Chapter I.: Subject of This Book.
• Chapter II.: Of Direct Methods of Preventing Offences.
• Chapter III.: Of Chronic Offences.
• Chapter IV.: Of Suppressive Remedies For Chronic Offences.
• Chapter V.: Of Martial Law
• Chapter VI.: Of the Nature of Satisfaction.
• Chapter VII.: Reasons Upon Which the Obligation to Make Satisfaction Is Founded.
• Chapter VIII.: Of the Different Kinds of Satisfaction.
• Chapter IX.: Of the Quantity of Satisfaction to Be Granted.
• Chapter X.: Of the Certainty of Satisfaction.
• Chapter XI.: Of Pecuniary Satisfaction.
• Chapter XII.: Of Restitution In Kind.
• Chapter XIII.: Of Attestative Satisfaction.
• Chapter XIV.: Of Honorary Satisfaction.
• Chapter XV.: Remedies For Offences Against Honour.
• Chapter XVI.: Of Vindictive Satisfaction.
• Chapter XVII.: Of Substitutive Satisfaction, Or At the Expense of a Third Party.
• Chapter XVIII.: Of Subsidiary Satisfaction At the Expense of the Public Treasure.
• Part II.—: Rationale of Punishment.
• Advertisement.
• Book I.: General Principles.
• Chapter I.: Definitions and Distinctions.
• Chapter II.: Classification.
• Chapter III.: Of the Ends of Punishment.
• Chapter IV.: Cases Unmeet For Punishment.
• Chapter V.: Expense of Punishment.
• Chapter VI.: Measure of Punishment.
• Chapter VII.: Of the Properties to Be Given to a Lot of Punishment.
• Chapter VIII.: Of Analogy Between Crimes and Punishments.
• Chapter IX.: Of Retaliation.
• Chapter X.: Of Popularity.
• Book II.: Of Corporal Punishments.
• Chapter I.: Simple Afflictive Punishments. *
• Chapter II.: Of Complex Afflictive Punishments.
• Chapter III.: Of Restrictive Punishments—territorial Confinement.
• Chapter IV.: Imprisonment.
• Chapter V.: Imprisonment—fees.
• Chapter VI.: Imprisonment Examined.
• Chapter VII.: General Scheme of Imprisonment.
• Chapter VIII.: Of Other Species of Territorial Confinement—quasi Imprisonment—relegation—banishment.
• Chapter IX.: Of Simply Restrictive Punishments.
• Chapter X.: Of Active Or Laborious Punishment.
• Chapter XI.: Capital Punishment.
• Chapter XII.: Capital Punishment Examined. *
• Book III.: Of Privative Punishments, Or Forfeitures.
• Chapter I.: Punishment Analyzed.
• Chapter II.: Of the Punishments Belonging to the Moral Sanction.
• Chapter III.: Forfeiture of Reputation.
• Chapter IV.: Of Pecuniary Forfeitures.
• Chapter V.: Forfeiture of Condition.
• Chapter VI.: Forfeiture of the Protection of the Law.
• Book IV.: Of the Proper Seat of Punishment: Or Say, of Mis-seated Punishment.
• Book V.: Of Complex Punishments.
• Chapter I.: Inconveniences of Complex Punishments.
• Chapter II.: Of Transportation.
• Chapter III.: Panopticon Penitentiary.
• Chapter IV.: Felony.
• Chapter V.: Of PrÆmunire.
• Chapter VI.: Outlawry.
• Chapter VII.: Excommunication.
• Book VI.: Miscellaneous Topics.
• Chapter I.: Choice of Punishments—latitude to Be Allowed to the Judges.
• Chapter II.: Of Subsidiary Punishments.
• Chapter III.: Of Surety For Good Conduct.
• Chapter IV.: Defeazance of Punishment.
• Appendix—: On Death-punishment. ∥ Jeremy Bentham to His Fellow-citizens of France.
• Part III.: Of Indirect Means of Preventing Crimes.
• Introduction.
• Chapter I.: Methods of Taking Away the Physical Power of Injuring.
• Chapter II.: Another Indirect Method—hinder the Acquisition of Knowledge Which May Be Rendered Injurious. †
• Chapter III.: Of Indirect Means of Preventing the Will to Commit Offences.
• Chapter IV.: Problem I. to Divert the Course of Dangerous Desires, and Direct the Inclination Towards Those Amusements Which Are Most Conformed to the Public Interest.
• Chapter V.: Problem II. to Make Such Arrangements, That a Given Desire May Be Satisfied Without Prejudice, Or With the Least Possible Prejudice.
• Chapter VI.: Problem III. to Avoid Furnishing Encouragement to Crimes.
• Chapter VII.: Problem IV. to Augment the Responsibility of Individuals, In Proportion As They Are More Exposed to Temptation to Do Wrong.
• Chapter VIII.: Problem V. to Diminish Sensibility With Regard to Temptation.
• Chapter IX.: Problem VI. to Strengthen the Impression of Punishments Upon the Imagination.
• Chapter X.: Problem VII. to Facilitate the Discovery of Offences Committed.
• Chapter XI.: Problem VIII. to Prevent Offences, By Giving to Many Persons an Interest In Preventing Them.
• Chapter XII.: Problem IX. to Facilitate the Recognition and the Finding of Individuals.
• Chapter XIII.: Problem X. to Increase the Difficulty of Escape For Delinquents.
• Chapter XIV.: Problem XI. to Diminish Uncertainty With Regard to Procedure and Punishment.
• Chapter XV.: Problem XII. to Prohibit Accessory Offences, In Order to Prevent Their Principals.
• Chapter XVI.: Of the Cultivation of Benevolence.
• Chapter XVII.: Employment of the Motive of Honour, Or of the Popular Sanction.
• Chapter XVIII.: Of the Employment of the Religious Sanction.
• Chapter XIX.: Uses to Be Drawn From the Power of Instruction.
• Chapter XX.: Use to Be Made of the Power of Education.
• Chapter XXI.: General Precautions Against the Abuse of Authority.
• Chapter XXII.: Measures to Be Taken Against the Ill Effects of an Offence Already Committed—conclusion of the Subject.

CHAPTER XV.

REMEDIES FOR OFFENCES AGAINST HONOUR.

We shall begin with the methods of satisfaction for offended honour; the reasons which justify them will follow.

Offences against honour may be divided into three classes: Verbal insults—Corporal insults—Insulting threats. The punishment analogous to the offence ought to operate, at the same time, as a means of satisfaction for the party injured.

• List of these Punishments.
• 1. Simple Admonition.
• 2. Reading of the sentence against the offender, by himself, in a loud voice.
• 3. The offender kneeling before the party injured.
• 4. Speech of humiliation which is prescribed to him.
• 5. Emblematical robes (with which he may be dressed in particular cases.)
• 6. Emblematical masks, with a snake’s head in cases of fraud—with a Magpie’s or a Parrot’s head in cases of temerity.
• 7. The witnesses of the insult, summoned to be witnesses of the reparation.
• 8. The individuals whose good opinion is of importance to the offender, summoned to the execution of the sentence.
• 9. Publicity of the judgment, by the choice of the place, concourse of spectators, the printing, the placarding, the distribution of the sentence.
• 10. Banishment, more or less long, whether from the presence of the party injured, or from that of his friends.—For an insult offered in a public place, as a market, theatre, or church, banishment from these places.
• 11. For a corporal insult, similar infliction, either by the party injured, or, at his choice, by the hand of the executioner.
• 12. For an insult offered to a woman, the man might be muffled up in the headdress of a woman, and the like insult might be inflicted on him by the hand of a woman.

Many of these methods are new, and some of them may appear singular: but new methods are necessary, since experience has shown the insufficiency of the old ones; whilst, as to their apparent singularity, it is by this that they are adapted to their end, and designed, by their analogy, to transfer to the insolent offender the contempt which he wished to fix upon the innocent. These methods are numerous and varied, that they may correspond with the number and variety of offences of this kind—that they may be adapted to the gravity of the cases, and furnish suitable reparations to the different social distinctions; for it is not proper to treat in the same manner an insult offered to a common person and to a magistrate, to an ecclesiastic and to a military man, to a young and to an old person. All this parade of speeches, attitudes, emblems, forms, solemn or grotesque, according to the difference of the cases; in a word, these public satisfactions converted into shows, would furnish to the injured party actual pleasures, and pleasures of remembrance, which would compensate for the mortification of the insult.

Observe, that the injury having been caused by some mechanical means, it is proper that similar mechanical means should be employed in the reparation, otherwise it will not strike the imagination in the same manner, and will be incomplete.

Has the offender employed a certain kind of injury for turning the public contempt upon his adversary? it is proper to employ an analogous kind of injury to turn this contempt upon himself. The seat of the evil is in opinion: it is in opinion that the remedy must be found. The wounds of this lance of Telepheus can only be cured by the touch of the same lance: it is an emblem of the operations of justice in matters of honour. Has the mischief arisen from an affront? it is only by an affront that it can be repaired.

Let us trace the effect of a satisfaction of this kind. The party injured is reduced to a state of intolerable inferiority before his aggressor; can no longer meet him with security in the same place, and sees in the future only a prospect of repeated injuries; but immediately after the legal reparation, he regains what he had lost, he walks with security, erect, and acquires even a positive superiority over his adversary. How is this change produced? It is because he is no longer seen as a feeble and miserable being, who may be trampled under foot: the power of the magistrate is become his. No one will be tempted to repeat the insult of which the punishment has had so much eclât. His oppressor, who appeared for a moment to overtop him, has fallen from his car of triumph; the punishment he has undergone in the presence of so many witnesses, proves that he is not more to be feared than another man; and there remains nothing of his violence but the remembrance of its chastisement. What can the offended party desire more? If he had the strength of a gladiator, where would be the advantage?

If legislators had always properly applied this system of satisfactions, there would have been no duels, which have only been, and still are, a supplement to the insufficiency of the laws. In proportion as this void in legislation is filled up by measures suited to the protection of honour, the use of duels will diminish; and they will cease entirely, when these honorary satisfactions agree exactly with opinion, and are faithfully administered. In former times, duels have been employed as a means of decision in a great number of cases, in which it would be most highly ridiculous now to employ them. A lawyer, who should send a challenge to his antagonist in order to prove a title, or establish a right, would be esteemed a fool: in the twelfth century, this method would have been esteemed valid. Whence arises this change? From the same cause which has by degrees been operating in jurisprudence. Justice, by becoming enlightened, and establishing laws and forms of procedure, has offered methods of redress preferable to that of duelling.* The same cause will produce the same effects. So soon as the law shall offer a remedy for offences against honour, there will be no temptation to have recourse to an equivocal and dangerous proceeding. Does any one love suffering and death? Certainly not. This sentiment is equally a stranger to the heart of the coward and of the hero. It is the silence of the laws—it is the neglect of justice, which obliges the wise man to protect himself by this sad, but sole resource.

In order that honorary satisfaction may have all the extent and force of which it is susceptible, the definition of offences against honour should have sufficient latitude to embrace them all. It should follow public opinion step by step—should be its faithful interpreter; every thing which it regards as an attack upon honour should be regarded as such. A word, a gesture, a look, is either of them regarded by the public as an insult. This word, this gesture, this look, should suffice, in justice, to constitute it an offence. The intention to injure constitutes the injury. Every thing directed toward a man, to express or to attract contempt towards him, is an insult, and ought to have its reparation.

It is said that these insulting signs, doubtful in their nature, fugitive, and often imaginary, would be too difficult to be described, and that some suspicious characters, seeing an insult where there was none, would cause the innocent to undergo undeserved punishments.

This danger is null, because the line of demarcation is easily traced between real and imaginary injury. It is sufficient, on the requisition of the complainant, to interrogate the defendant respecting his intention, “Did you design, by what you have said or done, to mark such an one with contempt?” If he deny it, his answer, true or false, is sufficient to clear the honour of him who has been, or believes himself to have been, offended. For, has the injury itself been only slightly equivocal? to deny it, is to have recourse to a lie, to acknowledge his fault, to disclose his fear and his weakness—in a word, it is to perform an act of inferiority, and to humiliate himself before his adversary.

In forming the catalogue of offences which possess the character of insults, there are necessary exceptions: care must be taken not to include in the decree of proscription useful acts of public censure—the exercise of the power of the popular sanction. The authority necessary for correction and reprimand must be reserved to friends and superiors. The freedom of history and of criticism must be secured.

[* ]It was in 1305 that Phillippe le Bel abolished duelling in civil cases. He had rendered the parliament sedentary at Paris, and done much for the establishment of judicial order.