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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Finally, in the third type of crimes we find particularly those which disturb the public peace and the calm of the citizenry, such as brawls and revels in the public streets which are meant for the conduct of business and traffic. Likewise, there is fanatical demagogy which arouses the volatile emotions of curious crowds, emotions that gain in strength from the mass of the listeners and from dark and inscrutable enthusiasm more than from clear and calm reason, which never influences a large gathering of men.
Among the measures effective in forestalling the dangerous amassing of popular emotions are street-lighting at public expense, the posting of guards in the various districts of the city, sober and moral sermons delivered in the silence and sacred peace of churches protected by public authorities, and homilies in defence of public and private interests in the nation's councils, in parliaments or wherever the majesty of the sovereign power resides. These make up one of the main branches of the care of the magistrate, which the French call police. But if the magistrate implements laws which are arbitrary and not set down in a code which is diffused among all the citizens, then the door is open to tyranny, which always hems in political liberty.
I can find no exception to the general truism that every citizen ought to know when he is guilty and when he is innocent.
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