cause.

Laws are made with a view to maintain society; to uphold its existence;
to prevent man associated, from injuring his neighbour; they are
therefore competent to punish those who disturb its harmony, or those
who commit actions that are injurious to their fellows; whether these
associates may be the agents of necessity, or whether they are free
agents, it suffices to know they are susceptible of modification, and
are therefore submitted to the operation of the law. Penal laws are, or
ought to be, those motives which experience has shewn capable of
restraining the inordinate passions of man, or of annihilating the
impulse these passions give to his will; from whatever necessary cause
man may derive these passions, the legislator proposes to arrest their
effect, when he takes suitable means, when he adopts proper methods, he
is certain of success. The Judge, in decreeing to crime, gibbets,
tortures, or any other chastisement whatever, does nothing more than is
done by the architect, who in building a house, places gutters to carry
off the rain, and prevent it from sapping the foundation.

Whatever may be the cause that obliges man to act, society possesses the
right to crush the effects, as much as the man whose land would be
ruined by a river, has to restrain its waters by a bank: or even, if he
is able, to turn its course. It is by virtue of this right that society
has the power to intimidate, the faculty to punish, with a view to its
own conservation, those who may be tempted to injure it; or those who
commit actions which are acknowledged really to interrupt its repose; to
be inimical to its security; repugnant to its happiness.

It will, perhaps, he argued, that society does not, usually, punish
those faults in which the will has no share; that, in fact, it punishes