date

1821 Oct. 29 To Toreno 3 o
1821 Oct. 29

To Toreno

3 o

Letter VII. Religion

Blasphemy

5

5

Not content with making a man punishable for blashemy uttered in a public place, (whatever it may be that may come to be […?] onto[?] blasphemy) Gentlemen take in hand the case of its being uttered in private, and be it ever so compleatly private pursue it with their punishment. Not quite so /soever/ great needed is the punishment in the case of privacy as in the case of publicity. In both cases it is either revulsion[?] or imprisonment: his words to which in their vocabulary different imports are attached. See But in the case of publicity it is from 15 days to 3 months: whereas in case of privacy it is no more than from 8 to 40 days.

Blasphemy, public, private—finding them in the most comon use, Gentlemen take up these words, and with the most perfect confusion employ them in the distribution of these lost of punishment, just as if of ideas ever so determinate[?] were respectively attached to them. Nothing as in a minute reflection may we may see can be further from the truth. As to blasphemy If ever there was a word which antecedently /preparatorily/ to the attaching of punishment to the commission of it required to be defined /fixt by a definition/: and in the proposed Code in question no attempt towards the construction of any such instrument of elucidation /security/ can I find.

Of publicity and privacy, the measure and only measure is—the number of the persons in whose presence the act is done or the state of things has place. But, familiar as is the word the idea meant to be attached to it requires to be fixt. But this can no otherwise be done but by reference made to the five senses, and according to the purpose in view, in one and the same state of things a man may be present to one purpose not present to another.
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  • Title: [1821 Oct. 29 B To Toreno 3]
    Description: 1821 Oct. 29 B

    To Toreno

    3 o

    Letter VII

    Blasphemy

    4

    4

    When, for an act by which no small evil either in the shape of pain or less of pleasure is produced, punishment is appointed to be inflicted, attention should be paid—not merely to the deal of coercion and thence of uneasiness imposed on every person who feel disposed to practice the act, and the punishment to which men may be subjected for practising it but to the facility afforded to malitious adversaries for the subjecting to the punishment by means of false testimony men by whom no act of the sort in question has really been committed. In this case in a manner more particularly manifest are all acts which leave behind them no perceptible material traces, and in particular spoken words.

    The greater the publicity of the act the less the danger of mischief on this score. But if it be of such a nature as that it is capable of being committed in the presence of no more than a single person, as in the case of words spoken, attach punishment to the evil[?] you thereby give a sort of licence to every person who has malice /malicious enough/ to accept it a licence to subject every adversary of his at pleasure on condition of declaring in the way of judicial testimony that a act of the sort in question has been done by the individual in question when assertion has no foundation in fact.
  • Title: [1821 Sept. 26 To Toreno Letter]
    Description: 1821 Sept. 26

    To Toreno

    Letter IV or V or VI

    § 3 Conditions

    Maxims by J.B

    *9

    *5

    1. A pecuniary punishment to a fixt or limited amount is pecuniary ruin to all those who do not possess property to an amount considerably superior, and a licence to all who by themselves or with the assistance of associates or other friends are able /would be able and willing/ to part with the money for the satisfaction of committing the offence. Innumerable if it be good for any thing will be your occasions for making application of this observation. For want of attention to it, I find in one such Article 589, an unlimited licence for the commission of mischief in every imaginable shape given to every man who has a few duros that he can spare. The price is thus fixt, and a very moderate one it is, at which a witness whose testimony is necessary to conviction may be bought off.

    Of imprisonment or any other chronical punishment the severity is greater and greater as the individual condemned is older and older: the portion which it occupies of his life is greater and greater, it is more and more likely to be perpetual. Upon this principle, by the help of Tables of mortality a scale of abatement[?] might be made. This observation may be found not altogether inapplicable to the head /the list/ of Relapses in the proposed Code.

    Wherever for /to/ two offences to the commission of which a man is tempted by the same motive and the same opportunity but differing in point of mischievousness the same punishment is attached, the punishment operates as a bounty on the commission of the most mischievous.

    Should these observations be found to contain any thing in them worth notice, many more might have been /be/ added that would not have been found less so. Here however I /they/ must end. In these upon recollection I perceive that there is nothing that in substance I have said elsewhere: and in particular in those works of mine of which the existence at least in French has[?] is to the Gentlemen in question so well known, and by the existence [of] which if there be any thing good in them so little good effect has been produced: nothing that in a less imperfect form I will not submitt to the /your/ Spanish Nation, if your rulers will leave it possible to me.
  • Title: [1818 Aug. 29 Essay Essay 4]
    Description: 1818 Aug. 29

    Essay Essay 4

    IX Punishment with[?] deserts

    1

    1. Applicabil[?] to political 2. to private morals

    Essay. I /III/. On ridicule considered as a test of truth.

    Essay II /IV/. On Blasphemy.

    Essay III /I/ On Merit and Meritorious service.

    Essay IV /II/. On desert as applied to punishment

    Essay On Desert as applied to punishment.

    Desert may with propriety, be applied to reward: it can not without impropriety, be applied to punishment. This is the pursuance which gave birth to the present Essay: this is the pursuance which it is the purpose and endeavour of the present /this same/ Essay to communicate to impress upon the minds of readers.

    Were the impropriety a mere verbal one, no such pains as will be necessary to prove it such will the author have ever thought it worth his while. The impropriety is indeed as will be shewn a verbal one - but from this verbal impropriety has sprung impropriety in action, and to such an extent that in every country upon earth the entire fabric /frame/ of penal law has been corrupted and perverted by it.