decency, destitute of the true principles of honour, he engages in
criminal pursuits that injure his country: which at the same time has
been to him nothing more than a step-mother. In the paroxysm of his
rage, in the exacerbation of his mind, he loses sight of his neighbour's
rights, he overlooks the gibbet, he forgets the torture; his unruly
desires have become too potent--they have completely absorbed his mind;
by a criminal indulgence they have given an inveteracy to his habits
which preclude him from changing them; laziness has made him torpid:
remorse has gnawed his peace; despair has rendered him blind; he rushes
on to death; and society is compelled to punish him rigorously, for
those fatal, those necessary dispositions, which it has perhaps itself
engendered in his heart by evil example: or which at least, it has not
taken the pains seasonably to root out; which it has neglected to oppose
by suitable motives--by those calculated to give him honest principles--
to excite him to industrious habits, to imbue him with virtuous
inclinations. Thus, society frequently punishes those propensities of
which it is itself the author, or which its negligence has suffered to
spring up in the mind of man: it acts like those unjust fathers, who
chastise their children for vices which they have themselves made them
contract.

However unjust, however unreasonable this conduct may be, or appear to
be, it is not the less necessary: society, such as it is, whatever may
be its corruption, whatever vices may pervade its institutions, like
every thing else in Nature, is willing to subsist; tends to conserve
itself: in consequence, it is obliged to punish those excesses which its
own vicious constitution has produced: in despite of its peculiar
prejudices, notwithstanding its vices, it feels cogently that its own
immediate security demands that it should destroy the conspiracies of
those who make war against its tranquillity: if these, hurried on by the