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.