23 - Public disgrace

Summary

Personal injuries which damage honour, that is, that proper esteem that a citizen can rightly expect from others, ought to be punished with public disgrace. This disgrace is a sign of public disapproval, which deprives the malefactor of public goodwill, of the nation's confidence, and of that sense almost of brotherhood which society inspires. The law does not stretch to such matters. It is therefore necessary that the disgrace inflicted by the law be the same as that which derives from the nature of things, the same as is dictated by universal morality or the particular morality which arises from particular systems, which are the lawgivers to common opinion in any given nation. If the one differs from the other, then either the laws lose public confidence or ideas of morality and rectitude disappear in spite of speechifyings, which can never overcome the power of examples.

Whoever describes actions which are in themselves matters of indifference as worthy of public disgrace, reduces the opprobrium attaching to actions which are truly disgraceful. The penalties of public disgrace ought not to fall too often nor on too many individuals at a time: in the first case, because when concrete effects are seen too frequently in matters of opinion they weaken the force of opinion itself; and in the second, because to disgrace many people is in effect to disgrace no-one.