JB/116/268/001

Click Here To Edit

5 Nov 1802

Letter 2 Note to p.27
Incendiarism

Note

Such as our ideas conceptions are, such are is our language:
such as our language is, such as our laws.+ Imperfect conceptions
give birth to imperfect language, and that to imperfect
laws. The words employed to impress denote this crime
are expressive are indicative of nothing beyond the nature of the instrument employed by it; and together with the corresponding
nature of the subject to which it is applied: fire applied to a
But the mischief depends not merely on the instrumental but on the nature
and local circum body susceptible of being damaged or destroy'd by fire. But
the real merit degree of its mischievousness depends is regulated/is governed by on
on neither of those circumstances: but on it depends on the nature combined
with the vicinity of the circumjacent bodies. Take a truss
of hay lying by itself on the middle of a damp ground in
the middle of an enclosure, a man who destroys it by the crime of him who has
employd fire to in the destruction of it is in point of mischief
no greater than of the hand in cattle to consume it.
Let the herbage be tinder, as in New South Wales, and
habitations contiguous and numerous, and the inhabitants
disarmed of their vigilance by ship, the act from
an inconsiderable trespass swells into one of the most horrible of
all vulgar crimes.+ While the treatment fate attached to offences the fate attached to crimes or supposed by government to
the conduct of subjects, crimes to acts numbered among crimes
is governed by the caprice of language and not by the
degree or nature of the mischief and while definition, confined to
the logical and physical branches of science it remains
the object of contempt or antipathy to judges+ and legislators,II
destruction must but for often every now be the lot of
the innocent or next to innocent, impunity still
that of the most atrocious guilt. How many crimes of
imaginary mischief still load the calendar! how many
men from whom society had nothing to fear apprehend have
suffered as for murder! how many acts tantamount
to theft, foregone malicious mischief the higher modifications of fraud and so on
without end remain, even now, without punishment, because
without a name!+

+See Condillac, Langue
des calculs. Paris
An 6.

II In old law Latin French
arson: in modern
English incendiarism.

+ In a well modernized
code, arson
incendiarism would therefore
hardly constitute a genus
of itself, it would stand
as a specific modification,
and in some cases
an aggravation of those
other crimes such as—criminal
destruction or criminal homicide
—according as it were, life, person, or property that were the subject matter of the offence.

+ To this day are
not men weak enough
to measure the severity
of the penal code by
the numbers of the
laws employed to compose
it: Babies and sucklings!
have ye not
read that in Draco's system
there was but one? Linnaeus alone would not be furnish you matter for a code, containing a hundred thousand laws, and yet still more imperfect than your own!

Identifier: | JB/116/268/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 116.
Date_1	1802-11-05	Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	116	Main Headings	panopticon versus new south wales
Folio number	268	Info in main headings field	letter 2
Image	001	Titles	note
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f27**
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	37801
Box Contents