★ Find a new page on our Untranscribed Manuscripts list.
LIBELS JUSTIFICATION.
Now either this is true, or it is if it is not it deserves no regard if it is, then men should be encouraged and stimulated to do so. How what more effectual stimulant than the motive of self-preservation? In treating of subjects of this delicate nature I would wish if possible not to know that how many persons, particularly how many great persons have treated on them before. To differ for the sake of difference from them, whoever they are they whoever they are, may believe me whoever I am, is of all things the farthest as it is from my interest, so also for my intentions. I know it has been said and is the standing answer observation upon the occasion, that justified
in Libel ought not to be admitted, because the calumniator might and ought to have brought the
person calumniated to Justice. It is something to say he ought & might; but it is
something more to say he will. Now I say by admitting justifications he will
he will in many cases where he never would have done so otherwise — it is not difficult to see that it is less trouble
to call a man a traytor or a forger, or a thief a or a cheat than to prove him so: But they would deny me their esteem: which I ambitionate much, if and sloth that stifles
many salutary accusations that self-preservation would have called forth. Public Zeal or
private spleen happily directed may carry a man thus far in a thousand instances
where it would carry him no further: I suppressed that difference, and the reasons on which it is founded the public would refuse theirs which I ambitionate more, if for the same motives I omitted to give those reasons all every advantage in that force of which every power I am master. it would leave him at the edge of the road of public
accusation, not always to be travelled in without expence, and never without trouble.
the Eloquence of the Legislator may display itself in declamations on the
Beauty of men's giving up their private Interest to that of the Public: But his real merit
is only seen in the fewer or more occasions with which his sagacity forces him
him of making those two interests coincide. [This as every body must perceive is
only active principle upon which the legal mechanism whole Machine of Jurisprudence depends for its operation motion] But if his
sagacity teaches punishes him with none, at least it should teach him not to expect such as offer of themselves Designing intent only on treading the path of present animosity, they would themselves unexpectedly engaged insensibly in the broad road tract of public utility, & pressed into the service of Justice. the Law.
If there is a principle in penal Jurisprudence less contrived & combustible than any other; it is this that a regulation will be and effectual exactly in the portion [of the ratio] of the offences known to be punished to those known to be committed. There can be but one objection to this, founded on the supposition of a general
of the Penal Law as being such, that more mischief would result from a vigorous than a relaxed execution of it. I hope and trust this supposition is erroneous; if not, it is high time to
do attempt something to make it so. But still it may possibly be maintained that, not
too corrupt to be executed in the class of greater crimes, yet
I hope it is not even in there: at least if that should be the opinion of any maker or
guardian of those Laws, less proof to be admitted for justification, than would be necessary for conviction it lies not in his mouth to say so. But this objection if it
is to be one, may be superseded by the excluding from the Catalogue all such whose
guilt mischievousness is so equivocal, as to make leave it a doubt whether the misery of the punishment of even [an
offender who offended] would be too great a purchase for the benefit suppression of the crime.
I am should be confounded, and should not I know not which way to turn myself to convince those if
any such there be, who should complain of the inexecution of the Laws in one breath, and reprobate the
means that offer themselves of executing them in another.
LIBES Justification.
|
Identifier: | JB/070/204/001"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 70. |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
070 |
of laws in general |
||
|
204 |
libels justification |
||
|
001 |
|||
|
text sheet |
1 |
||
|
recto |
|||
|
jeremy bentham |
[[watermarks::[gr motif] [britannia with shield motif]]] |
||
|
23319 |
|||
