Page:Sphere and Duties of Government.djvu/195

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175
SPHERE AND DUTIES OF GOVERNMENT.

transgressed them intentionally or culpably, and only in the degree in which the criminal thereby showed a disregard for the rights of others.

4. In the inquiry into crimes committed, the State may indeed employ every means consistent with the end, but none which would treat the citizen who is only suspected as already a criminal, neither any which would violate the rights of man and citizen (which the State must respect even in the criminal), or which would render the State guilty of an immoral action.

5. As regards especial arrangements for preventing crimes not yet committed, the State must only adopt them in so far as they avert the immediate perpetration. And all others, whether they are designed to counteract the causes of crime, or to prevent actions, harmless in themselves, but often leading to criminal offences, are wholly beyond the State's sphere of action. If there seems to be a contradiction between this principle and that laid down with regard to the actions of individual men, it must not be forgotten that the previous question was of such actions as in their immediate consequences were likely to infringe on the rights of others, and that here we are considering those from which, in order to produce this effect, a second action must arise. The concealment of pregnancy—to illustrate what I mean by an example—ought not to be forbidden in order to prevent infanticide (unless we were to regard it as already an indication of the mother's intention), but as an action which, of itself, and without any such intention, might be dangerous to the life of the infant.