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Dominion, Chapter XIII, 2
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10 In the next place we showed, that grief of mind arising from want did dispose the subjects to sedition; which want, although derived from their own luxury and sloth, yet they impute it to those who govern the realm, as though they were drained and oppressed by public pensions. Notwithstanding, it may sometimes happen that this complaint may be just; namely, when the burthens of the realm are unequally imposed on the subjects; for that which to all together is but a light weight, if many withdraw themselves it will be very heavy, nay, even intolerable to the rest: neither are men wont so much to grieve at the burthen itself, as at the inequality. With much earnestness therefore men strive to be freed from taxes; and in this conflict the less happy, as being overcome, do envy the more fortunate. To remove therefore all just complaint, it is the interest of the public quiet, and by consequence it concerns the duty of the magistrate, to see that the public burthens be equally borne. Furthermore, since what is brought by the subjects to public use, is nothing else but the price of their bought peace, it is good reason that they who equally share in the peace, should also pay an equal part, either by contributing their monies or their labours to the commonweal. Now it is the law of nature, (by art. 15, chap. III), that every man in distributing right to others, do carry himself equal to all. Wherefore rulers are, by the natural law, obliged to lay the burthens of the commonweal equally on their subjects.
It is natural equity, that monies be taxed according to what every man spends, not to what he possesseth.
11 Now in this place we understand an equality, not of money, but of burthen; that is to say, an equality of reason between the burthens and the benefits. For although all equally enjoy peace, yet the benefits springing from thence are not equal to all; for some get greater possessions, others less; and again, some consume less, others more. It may therefore be demanded, whether subjects ought to contribute to the public according to the rate of what they gain, or of what they spend: that is to say, whether the persons must be taxed, so as to pay contribution according to their wealth; or the goods themselves, that every man contribute according to what he spends. But if we consider, where monies are raised according to wealth, there they who have made equal gain, have not equal possessions, because that one preserves what he hath got by frugality, another wastes it by luxury, and therefore equally rejoicing in the benefit of peace, they do not equally sustain the burthens of the commonweal: and on the other side, where the goods themselves are taxed, there every man, while he spends his private goods, in the very act of consuming them he undiscernably pays part due to the commonweal, according to, not what he hath, but what by the benefit of the realm he hath had: it is no more to be doubted, but that the former way of commanding monies is against equity, and therefore against the duty of rulers; the latter is agreeable to reason, and the exercise of their authority.
It conduces to the preservation of peace, to depress the ambitious.
12 In the third place we said, that that trouble of mind which riseth from ambition, was offensive to public peace. For there are some, who seeming to themselves to be wiser than others, and more sufficient for the managing of affairs than they who at present do govern, when they can no otherwise declare how profitable their virtue would prove to the commonweal, they show it by harming it. But because ambition and greediness of honours cannot be rooted out of the minds of men, it is not the duty of rulers to endeavour it; but by constant application of rewards and punishments they may so order it, that men may know that the way to honour is not by contempt of the present government, nor by factions and the popular air, but by the contraries. They are good men who observe the decrees, the laws, and rights of their fathers. If with a constant order we saw these adorned with honours, but the factious punished and had in contempt by those who bear command, there would be more ambition to obey than withstand. Notwithstanding, it so happens sometimes, that as we must stroke a horse by reason of his too much fierceness, so a stiff-necked subject must be flattered for fear of his power; but as that happens when the rider, so this when the commander is in danger of falling. But we speak here of those whose authority and power is entire. Their duty, I say, it is to cherish obedient subjects, and to depress the factious all they can; nor can the public power be otherwise preserved, nor the subjects’ quiet without it.
And to dissolve factions.
13 But if it be the duty of princes to restrain the factious, much more does it concern them to dissolve and dissipate the factions themselves. Now I call a faction, a multitude of subjects gathered together either by mutual contracts among themselves, or by the power of some one, without his or their authority who bear the supreme rule. A faction, therefore, is as it were a city in a city: for as by an union of men in the state of nature, a city receives its being, so by a new union of subjects there ariseth a faction. According to this definition, a multitude of subjects who have bound themselves simply to obey any foreign prince or subject, or have made any pacts or leagues of mutual defence between themselves against all men, not excepting those who have the supreme power in the city, is a faction. Also favour with the vulgar, if it be so great that by it an army may be raised, except public caution be given either by hostages or some other pledges, contains faction in it. The same may be said of private wealth, if it exceed; because all things obey money. Forasmuch therefore as it is true, that the state of cities among themselves is natural and hostile, those princes who permit factions, do as much as if they received an enemy within their walls: which is contrary to the subjects’ safety, and therefore also against the law of nature.
Laws whereby gaining arts are cherished and great expenses restrained, do conduce much to the enriching of the subject.
14 There are two things necessary to the enriching of the subjects, labour and thrift; there is also a third which helps, to wit, the natural increase of the earth and water; and there is a fourth too, namely, the militia, which sometimes augments, but more frequently lessens the subjects’ stock. The two first only are necessary. For a city constituted in an island of the sea, no greater than will serve for dwelling, may grow rich without sowing or fishing, by merchandize and handicrafts only; but there is no doubt, if they have a territory, that they may be richer with the same number, or equally rich being a greater number. But the fourth, namely, the militia, was of old reckoned in the number of the gaining arts, under the notion of booting or taking prey; and it was by mankind, dispersed by families before the constitution of civil societies, accounted just and honourable. For preying is nothing else but a war waged with small forces. And great commonweals, namely, that of Rome and Athens, by the spoils of war, foreign tribute, and the territories they have purchased by their arms, have sometimes so improved the commonwealth, that they have not only not required any public monies from the poorer sort of subjects, but have also divided to each of them both monies and lands. But this kind of increase of riches is not to be brought into rule and fashion. For the militia, in order to profit, is like a die; wherewith many lose their estates, but few improve them. Since therefore there are three things only, the fruits of the earth and water, labour, and thrift, which are expedient for the enriching of subjects, the duty of commanders in chief shall be conversant only about those three. For the first those laws will be useful, which countenance the arts that improve the increase of the earth and water; such as are husbandry and fishing. For the second all laws against idleness, and such as quicken industry, are profitable; as such whereby the art of navigation, by help whereof the commodities of the whole world, bought almost by labour only, are brought into one city; and the mechanics, under which I comprehend all the arts of the most excellent workmen; and the mathematical sciences, the fountains of navigatory and mechanic employments, are held in due esteem and honour. For the third those laws are useful, whereby all inordinate expense, as well in meats as in clothes, and universally in all things which are consumed with usage, is forbidden. Now because such laws are beneficial to the ends above specified, it belongs also to the office of supreme magistrates to establish them.
CHAPTER XIV. OF LAWS AND TRESPASSES.
That more ought not to be determined by the laws, than the benefit of prince and subjects require.
15 The liberty of subjects consists not in being exempt from the laws of the city, or that they who have the supreme power cannot make what laws they have a mind to. But because all the motions and actions of subjects are never circumscribed by laws, nor can be, by reason of their variety; it is necessary that there be infinite cases which are neither commanded nor prohibited, but every man may either do or not do them as he lists himself. In these, each man is said to enjoy his liberty; and in this sense liberty is to be understood in this place, namely, for that part of natural right which is granted and left to subjects by the civil laws. As water inclosed on all hands with banks, stands still and corrupts; having no bounds, it spreads too largely, and the more passages it finds the more freely it takes its current; so subjects, if they might do nothing without the commands of the law, would grow dull and unwieldy; if all, they would be dispersed; and the more is left undetermined by the laws, the more liberty they enjoy. Both extremes are faulty; for laws were not invented to take away, but to direct men’s actions; even as nature ordained the banks, not to stay, but to guide the course of the stream. The measure of this liberty is to be taken from the subjects’ and the city’s good. Wherefore, in the first place, it is against the charge of those who command and have the authority of making laws, that there should be more laws than necessarily serve for good of the magistrate and his subjects. For since men are wont commonly to debate what to do or not to do, by natural reason rather than any knowledge of the laws, where there are more laws than can easily be remembered, and whereby such things are forbidden as reason of itself prohibits not of necessity, they must through ignorance, without the least evil intention, fall within the compass of laws, as gins laid to entrap their harmless liberty; which supreme commanders are bound to preserve for their subjects by the laws of nature.
That greater punishments must not be inflicted, than are prescribed by the laws.
16 It is a great part of that liberty, which is harmless to civil government and necessary for each subject to live happily, that there be no penalties dreaded but what they may both foresee and look for; and this is done, where there are either no punishments at all defined by the laws, or greater not required than are defined. Where there are none defined, there he that hath first broken the law, expects an indefinite or arbitrary punishment; and his fear is supposed boundless, because it relates to an unbounded evil. Now the law of nature commands them who are not subject to any civil laws, by what we have said in chap. III. art. 11, and therefore supreme commanders, that in taking revenge and punishing they must not so much regard the past evil as the future good; and they sin, if they entertain any other measure in arbitrary punishment than the public benefit. But where the punishment is defined; either by a law prescribed, as when it is set down in plain words that he that shall do thus or thus, shall suffer so and so; or by practice, as when the penalty, not by any law prescribed, but arbitrary from the beginning, is afterward determined by the punishment of the first delinquent; (for natural equity commands that equal transgressors be equally punished); there to impose a greater penalty than is defined by the law, is against the law of nature. For the end of punishment is not to compel the will of man, but to fashion it, and to make it such as he would have it who hath set the penalty. And deliberation is nothing else but a weighing, as it were in scales, the conveniences and inconveniences of the fact we are attempting; where that which is more weighty, doth necessarily according to its inclination prevail with us. If therefore the legislator doth set a less penalty on a crime, than will make our fear more considerable with us than our lust, that excess of lust above the fear of punishment, whereby sin is committed, is to be attributed to the legislator, that is to say, to the supreme; and therefore if he inflict a greater punishment than himself hath determined in his laws, he punisheth that in another in which he sinned himself.
Subjects must have right restored to them against corrupt judges.
17 It pertains therefore to the harmless and necessary liberty of subjects, that every man may without fear enjoy the rights which are allowed him by the laws. For it is in vain to have our own distinguished by the laws from another’s, if by wrong judgment, robbery, or theft, they may be again confounded. But it falls out so, that these do happen where judges are corrupted. For the fear whereby men are deterred from doing evil, ariseth not from hence, namely, because penalties are set, but because they are executed. For we esteem the future by what is past, seldom expecting what seldom happens. If therefore judges corrupted either by gifts, favour, or even by pity itself, do often forbear the execution of the penalties due by the law, and by that means put wicked men in hope to pass unpunished: honest subjects encompassed with murderers, thieves, and knaves, will not have the liberty to converse freely with each other, nor scarce to stir abroad without hazard; nay, the city itself is dissolved, and every man’s right of protecting himself at his own will returns to him. The law of nature therefore gives this precept to supreme commanders, that they not only do righteousness themselves, but that they also by penalties cause the judges, by them appointed, to do the same; that is to say, that they hearken to the complaints of their subjects; and as oft as need requires, make choice of some extraordinary judges, who may hear the matter debated concerning the ordinary ones.
Musean translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from Hobbes’s own 1651 English version of De Cive, complete (epistle, preface, eighteen chapters with annotations; Molesworth’s 1841 text) for fidelity, the author’s force and cadence, and modern clarity. Molesworth’s index is omitted.
10 Next we showed that the distress of want disposes subjects toward sedition. Though their poverty may arise from their own extravagance and idleness, they blame the rulers of the realm, as if public charges had drained and oppressed them. Yet sometimes this complaint may be just: namely, when the realm's burdens are imposed unequally on its subjects. A weight light when borne by all becomes very heavy, even intolerable, to the rest if many withdraw from carrying it. And people tend to resent the inequality more than the burden itself. They therefore strive intensely to escape taxation; and in this struggle those who fare worse, being defeated, envy those who fare better. To remove every just grievance, then, public peace requires—and consequently the magistrate's duty requires—that public burdens be borne equally. Furthermore, since what subjects contribute to public use is simply the price of the peace they have purchased, reason demands that those who share equally in peace should pay equal shares for it, whether they contribute money or labor to the commonwealth. Now the law of nature, by art. 15, chap. III, requires each person to deal equally with everyone when distributing what is due to them. Rulers are therefore obliged by natural law to impose the commonwealth's burdens equally on their subjects.
Natural equity requires that taxes be levied according to what each person spends, not what he possesses.
11 By equality here we mean not an equality of money but an equality of burden: that is, a proportionate equality between burdens and benefits. Though all enjoy peace equally, its benefits are not equal for all: some acquire greater possessions, others fewer; some consume less, others more. The question, therefore, is whether subjects should contribute to public needs in proportion to what they earn or to what they spend: whether people should be assessed according to their wealth, or goods themselves should be taxed so that each contributes according to what he consumes. Consider this: where money is raised according to wealth, people who have earned equally do not have equal possessions, since one keeps what he has earned through thrift while another squanders it in luxury. Thus, though they have enjoyed the benefit of peace equally, they do not bear the commonwealth's burdens equally. Where goods themselves are taxed, on the other hand, each person pays his share to the commonwealth imperceptibly in the very act of consuming his private goods, in proportion not to what he possesses but to what he has acquired through the realm's protection. There can therefore be no doubt that the former method of demanding money is contrary to equity, and thus contrary to rulers’ duty; the latter accords with reason and the proper exercise of their authority.
Keeping ambitious people in check helps preserve peace.
12 Third, we said that the disturbance of mind arising from ambition threatens public peace. Some, thinking themselves wiser than others and better qualified to manage affairs than those now governing, cannot otherwise demonstrate how useful their abilities would be to the commonwealth, so they demonstrate it by harming it. But since ambition and hunger for honors cannot be rooted out of people's minds, rulers have no duty to attempt it. By consistently applying rewards and punishments, however, they can arrange things so that people know the path to honor lies not through contempt for the present government, factions, or courting popular favor, but through the opposite conduct. Those who respect the decrees, laws, and inherited rights of their forebears are good citizens. If we regularly saw them honored, and the factious punished and held in contempt by those in command, ambition would lead more people to obedience than to resistance. At times, however, just as a horse must be stroked because it is too fierce, so a stubborn subject must be flattered for fear of his power. But that happens when the rider in one case, the commander in the other, risks being thrown. Here we speak of those whose authority and power remain whole. Their duty, I say, is to encourage obedient subjects and curb the factious as far as they can. Without this, neither public power nor the subjects’ peace can be preserved.
And so does dissolving factions.
13 If princes have a duty to restrain the factious, they have still greater reason to dissolve and disperse the factions themselves. By faction I mean a multitude of subjects brought together through mutual agreements or through the power of an individual, without the authority of whoever holds supreme rule. A faction is thus a city within a city: just as the union of people in the state of nature gives rise to a city, a new union of subjects gives rise to a faction. By this definition, subjects who have bound themselves simply to obey a foreign prince or another subject, or have made agreements or leagues to defend one another against everyone without excepting those who hold supreme power in the city, form a faction. Popular favor, too, if so great that it can raise an army, contains the seeds of faction unless public security is furnished through hostages or other pledges. The same can be said of excessive private wealth, for money commands everything. Since cities in relation to one another are in a natural and hostile condition, princes who permit factions act as though they had admitted an enemy within their walls. That is contrary to their subjects’ safety and therefore also to the law of nature.
Laws that encourage profitable arts and restrain great expenses contribute greatly to enriching subjects.
14 Two things are necessary to enrich subjects: labor and thrift. A third helps, namely the natural abundance of land and water; and there is a fourth, military force, which sometimes increases their wealth but more often diminishes it. Only the first two are indispensable. A city established on a sea island just large enough for habitation could grow rich without sowing or fishing, solely through trade and crafts. But if its people also had land, they could undoubtedly be richer at the same population, or equally rich with a larger one. As for the fourth, military force was formerly counted among the profitable arts under the name of plunder or the taking of spoils. Before civil societies were established, human beings scattered among families considered this practice just and honorable. For plundering is simply war waged with small forces. Great commonwealths, notably Rome and Athens, have sometimes so increased their wealth through the spoils of war, foreign tribute, and territory conquered by their arms that they not only needed no public money from their poorer subjects but distributed money and land to every one of them. Yet this way of increasing wealth cannot be made a regular practice. Military force used for profit is like a die: many lose their estates by it, while few improve them. Since, then, only three things—the fruits of land and water, labor, and thrift—are reliable means of enriching subjects, the duties of supreme rulers concerning wealth relate to these three alone. For the first, laws supporting arts that improve the yield of land and water, such as agriculture and fishing, will be useful. For the second, laws against idleness and in favor of industry are profitable: laws that duly honor navigation, through which the world's goods, purchased almost solely by labor, are brought into one city; the mechanical arts, by which I mean all the crafts of the most skillful workers; and the mathematical sciences, from which the arts of navigation and mechanics spring. For the third, laws forbidding immoderate expense on food, clothing, and everything else consumed through use are useful. Since such laws further the ends specified above, establishing them also belongs to the duties of supreme magistrates.
CHAPTER XIV. OF LAWS AND OFFENSES.
Laws should determine no more than the benefit of prince and subjects requires.
15 The liberty of subjects does not consist in exemption from the laws of the city, or in the inability of those who hold supreme power to make whatever laws they wish. Rather, because laws never circumscribe every movement and action of subjects, nor could they given their variety, there must be infinitely many cases neither commanded nor forbidden, in which each person may act or refrain as he pleases. In these cases a person is said to enjoy liberty. Here liberty must be understood in this sense: that portion of natural right granted and left to subjects by the civil laws. Water enclosed on every side by banks stands still and stagnates; without banks it spreads too widely, and the more passages it finds the more freely it flows. So too subjects, if they could do nothing without a command of law, would become dull and inert; if they could do everything, they would scatter. The more the laws leave undetermined, the more liberty subjects enjoy. Both extremes are faulty: laws were devised not to abolish human action but to guide it, just as nature formed banks not to stop a stream but to guide its course. The measure of this liberty must be taken from the good of subjects and city alike. First, therefore, it is contrary to the duty of those who command and have authority to make laws to enact more laws than are necessary for the good of the magistrate and his subjects. For people generally decide what to do and avoid by natural reason rather than by knowledge of the laws. When laws are too numerous to be easily remembered, and forbid actions that reason does not itself necessarily prohibit, innocent people must, through ignorance and without any wrongful intention, be caught by laws set like traps for their harmless liberty—a liberty that the law of nature binds supreme rulers to preserve for their subjects.
No greater punishments should be imposed than those prescribed by law.
16 An important part of liberty, harmless to civil government and necessary for each subject's happiness, is that people need fear no penalties except those they can foresee and expect. This is secured where no punishments at all are specified in the laws, or where no punishment greater than the specified one is demanded. Where none is specified, the first person to break the law expects an indefinite or arbitrary punishment; his fear is presumed limitless because it concerns an unlimited evil. Now the law of nature commands those who are subject to no civil laws, as we said in chap. III. art. 11—and therefore supreme rulers—to look in revenge and punishment not so much to the past offense as to the future benefit. They sin if they use any other standard for arbitrary punishment than the public good. But where a punishment has been defined, either by a written law, as when it plainly states that whoever does such-and-such shall suffer a specified penalty, or by practice, as when a penalty originally left to discretion is subsequently fixed by the punishment of the first offender—for natural equity requires equal punishment for equal offenses—there the imposition of a greater penalty than the law has established is contrary to the law of nature. For punishment aims not to compel a person's will but to shape it into the form desired by the person who set the penalty. Deliberation is, as it were, the weighing in a balance of the advantages and disadvantages of an action we contemplate; what weighs more necessarily prevails by its inclination. If, therefore, the legislator sets a penalty for an offense too small to make fear outweigh desire, the excess of desire over fear through which the offense is committed must be attributed to the legislator, that is, the sovereign. If he then imposes a punishment greater than the one he himself laid down in his laws, he punishes another for his own failure.
Subjects must have their rights restored against corrupt judges.
17 It is part of the harmless and necessary liberty of subjects that each may enjoy without fear the rights allowed him by law. There is no point in distinguishing one's own property from another's by law if wrongful judgment, robbery, or theft can confound them again. Yet that is what happens when judges are corrupt. For what deters people from wrongdoing is not the mere establishment of penalties but their enforcement. We judge the future from the past and seldom expect what seldom happens. If judges corrupted by gifts, favor, or even pity often neglect to enforce the penalties due under the law, and so give the wicked hope of going unpunished, upright subjects surrounded by murderers, thieves, and scoundrels will lose the freedom to associate with one another or even to go out with any safety. Indeed, the city itself is dissolved, and each person's right to protect himself as he sees fit returns to him. The law of nature therefore commands supreme rulers not only to do justice themselves but also, through penalties, to compel the judges they appoint to do likewise. That is, they must listen to their subjects’ complaints and, whenever necessary, choose extraordinary judges to hear charges brought against the ordinary ones.
Plain English translation
Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from Hobbes’s own 1651 English version of De Cive, complete (epistle, preface, eighteen chapters with annotations; Molesworth’s 1841 text). Molesworth’s index is omitted.
10 Next, I showed that distress caused by poverty makes subjects inclined to rebel. Although their poverty may come from their own extravagance and laziness, they blame the rulers, as if public payments had drained and oppressed them. Sometimes, however, the complaint may be justified: public burdens may be distributed unequally among subjects. A burden light enough when shared by everyone becomes very heavy, even unbearable, for those left to carry it if many others are exempt. Indeed, people usually resent the inequality more than the burden itself. So people struggle hard to be exempted from taxes, and those who lose this struggle envy the more fortunate. To remove every justified complaint, the magistrate has a duty to see that public burdens are borne equally, since public peace depends on it. What subjects contribute to public use is simply the price they pay for peace. It is therefore reasonable that people who share equally in that peace should also contribute an equal share to the commonwealth, whether in money or in work. As article 15 of chapter III states, the law of nature requires each person to treat everyone equally when assigning what is due to them. So the law of nature obliges rulers to place the commonwealth's burdens equally on their subjects.
Natural fairness requires taxes to depend on what each person spends, not on what he owns.
11 Here equality does not mean equal sums of money, but equal burdens. In other words, there should be a fair proportion between burdens and benefits. Though everyone enjoys peace equally, not everyone gets equal benefits from it. Some acquire more property and others less. Some also spend less and others more. We may therefore ask whether subjects should contribute to public needs according to what they earn or what they spend. Should individuals pay taxes according to their wealth, or should goods be taxed so that everyone contributes according to what he spends? Consider taxes on wealth. Two people with the same earnings may own different amounts because one saves what he earns through thrift while the other wastes it on luxury. Although both benefit equally from peace, they then do not carry equal public burdens. With taxes on goods, on the other hand, each person pays his share to the commonwealth as he uses up his own goods. He pays almost without noticing, according not to what he owns but to what he has received through the benefits of living in the realm. There can be no doubt that collecting money by the first method is unfair and therefore contrary to rulers' duty. The second method agrees with reason and with the proper exercise of their authority.
Restraining ambitious people helps preserve peace.
12 Third, I said that the mental unrest caused by ambition harms public peace. Some people think themselves wiser than others and better qualified to manage affairs than those now governing. Unable to show in any other way how their talents could help the commonwealth, they show them by doing it harm. Rulers cannot remove ambition and the hunger for honor from people's minds, so they have no duty to try. But by steadily giving rewards and punishments, they can make people understand that the path to honor lies not in contempt for the present government, factions, or popular approval, but in the opposite conduct. Good people obey the decrees, laws, and rights handed down by their ancestors. If people saw rulers consistently honor these citizens while punishing and despising the factious, more people would aspire to obey than to resist. Sometimes, however, an overexcited horse must be stroked, and likewise a stubborn subject must be flattered because of his power. In the first case, the rider is in danger of falling; in the second, the ruler is. But I am speaking here of rulers whose authority and power are intact. Their duty is to encourage obedient subjects and restrain the factious as much as possible. Otherwise public power and the subjects' peace cannot be preserved.
And breaking up factions helps preserve peace.
13 If rulers must restrain factious people, they have an even greater duty to break up and scatter factions themselves. By a faction I mean a group of subjects brought together either by agreements among themselves or by someone's power, without the authorization of whoever holds supreme authority. A faction is like a commonwealth within a commonwealth. Just as people coming together in the state of nature bring a commonwealth into being, subjects forming a new union give rise to a faction. Under this definition, a group of subjects forms a faction if they pledge unqualified obedience to a foreign prince or another subject. The same is true if they make agreements or alliances to defend one another against everyone, without excepting those who hold supreme power in their commonwealth. Popular favor also contains the possibility of a faction if it is great enough to raise an army, unless safeguards for the public are supplied through hostages or other pledges. The same holds for excessive private wealth, because money commands everything. As commonwealths exist in a natural state of hostility toward one another, rulers who allow factions might as well admit an enemy inside their walls. That is contrary to their subjects' safety and therefore to the law of nature.
Laws that encourage profitable trades and limit large expenses greatly help enrich subjects.
14 Two things are essential to enriching subjects: work and thrift. A third thing helps, the natural produce of land and water. There is also a fourth, military force, which sometimes increases their wealth but more often reduces it. Only the first two are essential. A commonwealth established on an island just big enough to live on can become rich through trade and skilled crafts alone, without farming or fishing. Still, if its people have land, there is no doubt they can become richer with the same population or equally rich with a larger one. In the past, military force was counted among the profitable occupations, since it allowed people to seize booty. Before civil societies were established, people living in separate families considered taking booty just and honorable. Raiding is simply warfare with a small force. Great commonwealths such as Rome and Athens sometimes increased their public wealth so much through the spoils of war, tribute from foreigners, and land conquered by force that they did not need to demand public money from their poorer subjects. They even distributed money and land to each of them. But such a source of wealth cannot be made a regular practice. Seeking profit through war is like gambling with dice: many lose their property, while few increase it. Only three things, then, are useful for enriching subjects: the produce of land and water, work, and thrift. Supreme rulers should concern themselves with these three. Laws promoting farming and fishing, which increase the produce of land and water, help with the first. With the second, laws against idleness and laws encouraging hard work are useful. Such laws give proper honor and standing to seafaring, which brings goods from around the world into one commonwealth at a cost consisting almost entirely of work; to skilled crafts, by which I mean every kind of highly skilled work; and to mathematics, which provides the foundations for seafaring and skilled crafts. With the third, laws are useful that prohibit excessive spending on food, clothing, and everything else used up in consumption. Because such laws serve the ends described above, establishing them is part of the duty of supreme magistrates.
CHAPTER XIV. ON LAWS AND OFFENSES.
Laws should not settle more than the interests of ruler and subjects require.
15 Subjects' liberty does not mean exemption from the commonwealth's laws, or that supreme rulers cannot make whatever laws they choose. Laws do not, and cannot, cover every move and action of subjects because these vary so much. There must therefore be countless cases in which the law neither commands nor forbids an action. Each person can then choose whether to act. This is where each person enjoys liberty. Here liberty means the part of natural right that civil laws allow subjects to keep. Water hemmed in by banks on every side stands still and goes bad. Without any bounds, it spreads too far; the more outlets it finds, the more freely it flows. Similarly, if subjects could do nothing without an order from the law, they would become sluggish and unable to act. If they could do everything, they would scatter. The more the laws leave unsettled, the more freedom subjects have. Both extremes are wrong. Laws were invented to guide people's actions, not to prevent them, just as nature made riverbanks to guide the stream, not stop it. The measure of liberty is what benefits subjects and the commonwealth. Rulers with the power to make laws therefore neglect their duty if they make more laws than the good of ruler and subjects requires. People commonly decide what to do by their natural reason rather than by knowing the laws. If the laws are too numerous to remember easily, and forbid things that reason itself does not necessarily forbid, people with no bad intentions will break them through ignorance. Such laws become traps set for their innocent liberty, which supreme rulers are obliged by the laws of nature to preserve.
Punishments must not be greater than those set by law.
16 An important part of the liberty that does no harm to civil government and is necessary for every subject's happiness is freedom from the fear of unexpected penalties. People should fear only penalties they can foresee and expect. This holds where laws either set no penalties or require no greater ones than they specify. Where the law sets no penalty, the first person to break it faces a punishment that is undefined and left to someone's choice. His fear is considered limitless because the harm he faces has no limit. As stated in chapter III, article 11, the law of nature requires people who are not subject to civil laws, including supreme rulers, to consider future good more than past wrongdoing when taking revenge or punishing. If they choose any standard other than the public good when setting an arbitrary punishment, they do wrong. But a penalty may be defined either by a written law, as when it plainly says that whoever does a particular thing will suffer a particular punishment, or by established practice. In the latter case the penalty was originally left to choice but later settled by the punishment of the first offender. Natural fairness requires equal punishments for equal offenses. Once a penalty has been defined in either way, imposing a greater one violates the law of nature. The purpose of punishment is not to force a person's will but to shape it into the form intended by the person setting the penalty. Deliberation is like weighing on a scale the advantages and disadvantages of an action under consideration. The side that weighs more will necessarily prevail. If a lawmaker sets a penalty for an offense too small for fear to outweigh desire, then the excess of desire over fear that leads to the offense is the lawmaker's fault. The supreme ruler who inflicts a greater punishment than his own laws specified punishes someone else for a fault that was his own.
Subjects must receive justice against corrupt judges.
17 Another part of subjects' necessary, harmless liberty is the ability to enjoy without fear the rights the laws allow them. There is no point in laws separating what belongs to us from what belongs to others if a wrong judgment, robbery, or theft can mix them up again. That can happen when judges are corrupt. What deters people from wrongdoing is not the mere existence of penalties but their enforcement. We judge what will happen by what has happened, and seldom expect what seldom occurs. If judges often fail to enforce the penalties required by law because of bribes, favoritism, or even pity, they give wicked people hope of escaping punishment. Law-abiding subjects, surrounded by murderers, thieves, and cheats, will not be free to deal openly with one another. They will barely be able to go outside without danger. Indeed, the commonwealth itself dissolves, and each person regains the right to protect himself as he sees fit. The law of nature therefore commands supreme rulers not only to act justly themselves but also to use penalties to make the judges they appoint act justly. That means listening to subjects' complaints and, whenever necessary, selecting special judges to hear charges against the ordinary judges.