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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
The other question is whether it is useful to put a price on the head of a man known to be guilty and to make every citizen an executioner by arming him. The criminal is either outside or inside the country's borders. In the former case, the sovereign urges the citizens to commit a crime and exposes them to punishment for encroaching on and usurping the authority of other countries, and thereby authorises the other countries to do likewise to him. In the latter case, he shows his own weakness. If someone has the power to defend himself, he does not attempt to buy it. Moreover, such a decree overturns all ideas of morality and virtue, which are driven from the human mind by the slightest breeze. One moment the laws call for betrayal and the next they punish the same. With one hand the lawgiver tightens the bonds of family, of clan and of friendship, and with the other he rewards those who break and shatter them. Ever contradictory, one moment he urges the suspicious minds of men to have faith in each other, and the next he spreads misgivings in every heart. Instead of preventing one crime, he encourages a hundred. Such are the expedients adopted in weak nations, whose laws are nothing but makeshift repairs to a ruined building which is falling down on all sides.
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