CHAP. XVIII.
How dangerous it is in Republics to be too severs in punishing the Crime of high Treason.
Book XII.
Chap. 18.AS soon as a republic has compassed the destruction of those who wanted to subvert it, there should be an end of examples, punishments, and even of rewards.
Great punishments,and consequently great changes, cannon take place without investing some citizens with too great a power. It is therefore more adviseable in this case to exceed in lenity, than in severity; to banish but few, rather than many; and to leave them their estates, rather than to make a great number of confiscations. Under pretence of avenging the republic's cause, the avengers would establish tyranny. The business is not to destroy the rebel but the rebellion. They ought to return as quick as possible into the usual track of government, in which every one is protected by the laws, and no one injured.
We find in Appian[1], the edict and formula of the proscriptions. One would imagine that they had no other aim than the good or the republic, so cooly they speak, so many advantages they point out, so preferable are the means they take to others, such security they promise to the rich, such tranquillity to the poor, so afraid they seem to be of endangering the lives of the subjects, so desirous of appealing the soldiers: a dreadful example, which shews how near severe punishments border upon tyranny.
- ↑ Of the civil wars, Book 4.
