a STATE OF NATURE, where little is confulted but the support of our being, our wants must be few, and our appetites, in proportion, weak; and that in CIVIL SOCIETY, where the arts of life are cultivated, our wants must be many, and our appetites, in proportion, ftrong.

II. Thus far concerning the imperfection of civil Society, with regard to the administration of that power which it hath, namely of punishing Tranfgreffors. We fhall next confider its much greater imperfection with regard to that power which it wanteth; namely of rewarding the Obedient.

The two great fanctions of all Law and Command are REWARD and PUNISHMENT. These are generally called the two hinges, on which all kinds of Government turn. And so far is certain, and apparent to the common fenfe of mankind, that whatever laws. are not enforced by both these fanctions, will never be observed in any degree fufficient to carry on the ends of civil Society..

Yet, I fhall now fhew, from the original conftitution and nature of this Society, that it neither had, nor could enforce, the SANC

TION OF REWARD.

But, to avoid mistakes, I defire it may be observed, that by reward, muft needs here be meant, fuch as is conferred on every onc for obeying the laws of his country; not fuch as is bestowed on particulars, for any eminent fervice: as by punishment we understand that which is inflicted on every one for tranfgreffing the laws; not that which is imposed on particulars, for neglecting to do all the fervice in their power.

I make no doubt but this will be called a paradox; nothing being more common in the mouths of politicians*, than that the fanctions, of reward and punishment are the two pillars of civil government; and all the modern Utopias and ancient fyftems of fpeculative po

* Neque folum ut Solonis dictum ufurpem, qui & fapientiffimus fuit ex septem, & legum fcriptor folus ex feptem. Is rempublicam duabus rebus contineri dixit, pramio & pœnâ. Cic. ad Brutum, Ep. 15. Edit. Oxon: 4to. T. IX. p. 85, 86.

litics derive the whole vigour of their laws from these two fources. In fupport then of my affertion, permit me to inforce the two following propofitions :

I. That, by the original conftitution of civil Government, the fanction of rewards was not established by it.

II. That by the very nature of civil Government they could not be established.

I. The truth of the firft propofition appears from hence. On entering into Society, it was ftipulated, between the Magistrate and People, that protection and obedience should be the reciprocal conditions of each other. When, therefore, a citizen obeys the laws, that debt on Society is discharged by the protection it affordeth him. But in respect to disobedience, the proceeding is not analogous; (though protection, as the condition of obedience, implies the withdrawing of it, for difobedience;) and for thefe reafons: The effect of withdrawing protection must be either expulfion from the Society, or the expofing the offender to all kind of licence, from others, in it. Society could not practise the first, without bringing the body politic into a confumption; nor the latter without throwing it into convulfions. Befides, the first is no punishment at all, but by accident; it being only the leaving one Society to enter into another: and the second is a very inadequate punishment; for though all obedience be the fame, and fo, uniform protection a proper return for it; yet disobedience being of various kinds and degrees, the withdrawing protection, in this latter fenfe, would be too great a punishment for fome crimes, and too fmall for others.

This being the cafe, it was ftipulated that the tranfgreffor should be fubject to pecuniary mulets, corporal infliction, mutilation of members, and capital feverities. Hence arose the Sanction, and the only fanction of civil Laws: for, that protection is no reward, in the fenfe which these are punishments, is plain from hence, that the one is of the effence of Society itself; the other an occafional adjunct. But this will further appear by confidering the opposite to protection, which is expulfion, or banishment; for this is the natural

I 2

natural confequence of withdrawing protection. Now this, as we faid, is no punishment but by accident: and fo the State understood it; as we may collect, even from their manner of employing it as a punishment on offenders: for banishment is of universal use, with other punishments, in all focieties. Now where withdrawing protection is inflicted as a punishment, the practice of all States hath been to retain their right to obedience from the banished member; though, according to the nature of the thing, confidered alone, that right be really difcharged; obedience and protection, as we observed, being reciprocal. But it was neceffary all states should act in this manner when they inflicted exile as a punishment, it being no punishment but by accident, when the claim to subjection was remitted with it. They had a right to act thus i because it was inflicted on an offender; who by his very offence had forfeited all claim of advantage from that reciprocal condition.

II. The fecond propofition is, that by the nature of civil govern ment, the fanction of rewards could not be enforced by it: My reafon is, because Society could neither diftinguifh the objects of its favour; nor reward them, though they were distinguished.

I. First, Society could not diftinguish the objects of its favour. To inflict punishment, there is no need of knowing the motives of the offender; but judicially to confer reward. on the obedient, there is.

All that civil judicatures do in punishing is to find whether the act was wilfully commited. They enquire.not into the intention or motives any further, or otherwife than as they are the marks of a voluntary act: and having found it fo, they concern themselves no more with the man's motives or principles of acting; but punish, without fcruple, in confidence of the offender's demerit. And this with very good reafon; because no one of a found mind, can be ignorant of the principal offences against right, or of the malignity of those offences, but by fome fottifh negligence which hath hindered his information; or fome brutal paffion which hath pre

judiced

Judiced his judgment; both which are highly faulty, and deferve civil punishment.

It is otherwife in rewarding abftinence from trangreffion. Here the motive must be confidered; because as merely doing ill, i. e. without any particular bad motive, deferves punishment, a crime in the cafe of wrong judgment being ever neceffarily inferred; fo merely abstaining from ill, i. e. without any particular good motive, cannot, for that very reafon, have any merit.

In judicially rewarding, therefore, the motives must be known, but human judicatures cannot know them but by accident: it is only that tribunal, which fearches the heart, that can penetrate thus far. We conclude, therefore, that reward cannot, properly, be the fanction of human laws.

If it should be faid, that though rewards cannot be equitably adminiftred, as punishments may, yet, nothing hinders but that, for the good of Society, all who obferve the laws fhould be rewarded, as all who tranfgrefs the laws are punished? The answer will lead us to the proof of the second part of this propofition.

2. That Society could not reward, though it should difcover the objects of its favour; the reafon is, because no Society can ever find a fund fufficient for that purpose, without raifing it on the people as a tax, to pay it back to them as a reward.

But the univerfal practice of Society confirms this reasoning, and is explained by it; the fanction of punishments only having, in all ages and places, been employed to fecure the obfervance of civil laws. This was fo remarkable a fact, that it could not escape the notice of a certain admirable Wit and ftudious obferver of men and manners; who speaks of it as an univerfal defect: Although we usually (fays he) call reward and punishment the two hinges, upon which all government turns, yet I could never obferve this maxim to be put in practice by any nation except that of Lilliput *. Thus he introduceth an account of the laws and customs of an Utopian Consti

tution of his own framing; and, for that matter, as good, perhaps, as any of the reft: and, had he intended it as a fatire against fuch chimerical Commonwealths, nothing could have been more juft. For all these political romancers, from Plato to this Author, make civil rewards and punishments the two hinges of government.

I have often wondered what it was, that could lead them from fact, and universal practice, in so fundamental a point. But without doubt it was this: The defign of such sort of writings is to give a perfect pattern of civil Government; and to fupply the fancied defects in real Societies. The end of government coming first under confideration; and the general practice of Society feeming to declare this end to be only, what in truth it is, fecurity to our temporal liberty and property; the fimplicity of it difpleased, and the plan appeared defective. They imagined, that, by enlarging the bottom, they should ennoble the ftructure; and, therefore, formed a romantic project of making civil Society serve for all the good purposes it was even accidentally capable of producing. And thus, instead of giving us a true picture of civil Government, they jumbled together all forts of Societies into one; and confounded the religious, the literary, the mercantile, the convivial, with the CIVIL. Whoever reads them carefully, if indeed they be worth reading carefully, will find that the errors they abound in are all of this nature; and that they arise from the lofing, or never having had, a true idea of the fimple plan of civil Government: a circumftance which, as we have fhewn elsewhere*, hath occasioned many wrong judgments concerning it. No wonder, then, that this miftake concerning the end of civil Society, drew after it others, concerning the means; and this, amongst the rest, that reward was one of the fanctions of human laws.

On the whole then, it appears, that civil Society hath not, in itself, the Sanction of rewards, to fecure the obfervance of its laws.. So true, in this fenfe likewife, is the obfervation of St. Paul, that

See The Alliance between Church and State.

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