obedience should be reciprocal conditions. When, therefore, a citizen obeys the laws, that debt on society is discharged by the protection it affordeth him. But, in respect to disobedience, the proceeding is not analogous (though protection, as the condition of obedience, implies the withdrawing it on disobedience) and for these Reasons: The effect of withdrawing protection must be either expulsion from the society, or exposing the offender to all kinds of insult from others, in it. Society could not practise the first, without bringing the body politic into a con-sumption; nor the latter, without throwing it into convulsions. Besides, the first is, no punishment at all, except by accident; it being only leaving one Society to go into another: And the second is an inadequate punishment; for though all obedience be the same; and so, uniform protection a proper return for it; yet disobedience being various both in kind and degree, the withdrawing protection would be too great a punishment for some crimes, and too small for others.

This being the case, it was stipulated that the transgressor should be subject to pecuniary mulcts, corporal castigations, mutilation of members, and capital inflictions. These were the sanction, and only sanction of civil laws. For, that protection is no reward in the sense that these are punishments, is plain from hence, that protection is of the essence of society itself; penal inflictions an occasional adjunct. But this will farther appear by considering the opposite to protection, which is expulsion, or banishment; for this is the natural consequence of withdrawing protection. Now this, as we said, is no punishment but by accident: and so the State understood it; as we may collect, even from their manVOL. VII. D

ner

ner of employing it as a punishment on offenders: for banishment is of universal practice, with other punishments, in all societies. Now, where withdrawing protection is inflicted as a punishment, the practice of all states hath been, to retain their right to obedience from the banished member; though, according to the nature of the thing, considered alone, that right be really discharged; obedience and protection, as we observed, being reciprocal. But it was necessary all States should act in this manner when they inflicted exile as a punishment; it being no punishment but by accident, when the claim to subjection was remitted with it. They had a Right to act thus; because it was inflicted on an Offender; who had wilfully forfeited all claim of advantage from that reciprocal condition*.

II. But secondly, from the nature of civil government, the sanction of rewards could not be enforced by it because society could neither distinguish the objects of its favour; nor reward them, though they were distinguished.

1. First, Society could not distinguish the objects of its Favours. To inflict punishment, there is no need of knowing the Motives of the offender; but judicially to confer reward, on the obedient, there is.

All that civil judicatures do in punishing is to find whether the act was wilfully committed. They enquire not into the intention or motives, any further, or otherwise, than as they are the marks of a voluntary act; and having found it so, they concern themselves no further with the motives or principles of acting, but punish, without scruple, in con

• See Note [A] at the end of this Book.

fidence

fidence of the offender's demerit. And this with very good reason; because no one of a sound mind can be supposed ignorant of the principal offences against right, or of the malignity of those offences, but by some sottish negligence that hath hindered his information; or some brutal passion that hath prejudiced his judgment; both which are highly faulty, and deserve civil punishment.

It is otherwise in rewarding the abstaining from transgression. Here the motive must be considered: because as merely doing ill, i.e. without any particular wrong motive, deserves punishment, a crime in the case of wrong judgment being ever necessarily inferred; so merely abstaining from ill cannot, for that very reason, have any merit.

In judicially rewarding, therefore, the Motives must be known but human Judicatures can know them but by accident: It is only that tribunal, which searches the heart, that penetrates thus far. We conclude, therefore, that reward cannot, properly, be the sanction of human Laws.

If it should be said, that though rewards cannot be equitably administered like punishments; yet nothing hinders but that, for the good of society, all who observe the laws may be rewarded, as all who transgress the laws may be punished: the answer will lead us to the proof of the second part of this proposition.

2. That society could not reward, though it should discover the objects of its favour; the reason is, because no society can ever find a fund sufficient for that purpose, without raising it on the people as a tax, to pay it back to them as a reward.

But the universal practice of society confirms

this reasoning, and is explained by it; the sanction of punishments only, having, in all ages and places, been employed to secure the observance of civil laws. This was so remarkable a fact, that it could not escape the notice of a certain excellent wit, and studious observer of men and manners; who speaks of it as an universal defect: although we usually, says he, call reward and punishment the two hinges, upon which all government turns, yet I could never observe this marim to be put in practice by any nation except that of Lilliput*. Thus he introduceth an account of the laws and customs of an Utopian constitution of his own framing; and, for that matter, as good, perhaps, as any of the rest: And, had he intended it as a satire against such chimerical commonwealths, nothing could have been more just for all these political romancers, from Plato to this author, make civil rewards and punishments the two hinges of go

vernment.

I have often wondered what it was, that could lead the reformers of laws from fact, and universal practice, in so fundamental a point: But, without doubt, it was this: the design of such sort of writings is to give a perfect pattern of civil government; and to supply the fancied defects in real societies. The end of government coming first under consideration; and the general practice of society seeming to declare this end to be only, what, in truth, it is, security to our temporal liberty and property; the simplicity of the plan displeased, and appeared defective. They imagined, that, by enlarging the bottom, they should ennoble the structure: and, therefore, formed a romantic project of making civil society serve for all the good purposes it was even accidentally ca

• Gulliver's Travels, vol. I. p. 97.

pable

pable of producing. And thus, instead of giving us a true picture of government, they jumbled together all sorts of societies into one; and confounded the religious, the literary, the mercantile, the convivial, with the CIVIL. Whoever reads them carefully, if indeed they be worth reading carefully, will find that the errors, in which they abound, are all of this nature, and arise from this source, from the losing, or never having had, a true idea of the simple plan of civil government a circumstance, which, as we shall shew occasionally, in the course of this work, hath been productive of many wrong judgments concerning it. No wonder then, that this mistake, concerning the end of civil society, drew after it others, concerning the means; and this, amongst the rest, that reward was one of the sanctions of human laws.

On the whole, then, it appears, that civil society hath not, in itself, the sanction of rewards, to secure the observance of its own laws. So true, in this sense, is the observation of St. Paul, that THE LAW WAS NOT MADE FOR THE RIGHTEOUS, BUT FOR THE UNRULY AND DISOBEDIENT.

But it being evident, that the joint sanctions of rewards and punishments are but just sufficient to secure the tolerable observance of right (the common false opinion that these are the two hinges of government arising from that evidence), it follows, that, as RELIGION, ONLY, CAN SUPPLY THE SANCTION OF REWARDS, WHICH SOCIETY WANTS, AND HATH NOT, RELIGION IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT.

Thus, on the whole, we see,

I. That society, by its own proper force, cannot provide for the observance of above one third

part

of