[xxxviii. 25]

1822. July 15

Constitut. Code Rationale.

Securities

5 Moral Counterforce

Public Opinion Tribunal

Evidence and Comments

33. 2. So, on the field of taste: viz.

1. Of the sexual appetite, eccentricities by which no power is produced. By indication of them, power may be produced enough to fill a whole life with bitterness. Enemy to greatest happiness, not the agent but the indicator. Greater the evil produced by the indication where the │   │ has than where it has not been done. By groundlessness of the indication is afforded comfort in the opposite case wanting.

34. 2. Breach of marriage contract, particularly on female side. Act unknown, pleasure none, pain none. For punishing an act, sole good reason, the danger it produces of disclosure: disclosure generally but too probable.

35. Advantages of this moral over legal punishment.

1. Application more extensive, even all-comprehensive: viz. to every thing by which happiness is lessened: to vices as well as crimes.

2. More gentle: incapable of running into such great excess.

3. More extensive: not exposed to be evaded by want of evidence and by quibbles.

Better reason therefore for crying out against legal punishment than against defamation.

36. So far as law contributes to greatest happiness, Public opinion Tribunal strengthens it. Against all acts vitious enough to be punished as criminal, it furnishes it with a fund of Evidence in the shape of defamation, in so far as useful and true.

37 Through this channel, depredation and oppression inflicted for want of law or by law, are met by complaint, and their course stopt or retarded. Sufferers, otherwise helpless, receive mitigation.

38 Act (suppose) not only vitious but punishable. Give intimation of it through the appropriate channel to Public opinion Tribunal, the information thus furnished, though it can not be acted upon by Judges to the purpose of conviction may be by individuals to the purpose of prosecution and investigation of legally receivable Evidence.

39. Against evil produced or protected by Rulers, i.e. by the law, this applies the only remedy.

40. Every endeavour to destroy or diminish this counterforce is do. to apply strength to misrule, decrease to human happiness, encrease to human misery.

Of the foulest individual crime nothing worse, nothing so bad, can with truth be said.