ar to punish the thief, the robber,
and the murderer, think you that crime will be diminished? Reason and
experience prove the contrary. Active benevolence and kindness should
always attend just punishment, but they were never designed to prohibit
it. The laws of God's universe are founded on justice as well as love.
"The moral sentiment of every community rises in opposition to injury
inflicted upon the just, the kind, and the merciful;" but this fact does
not entirely prevent wicked men from robbing and murdering innocent
persons, and therefore wise and just laws require that criminals shall
be punished, in order that those who are dead to all moral restraints
may be deterred from crime through fear of punishment.

"2d. But suppose the [national] injury to be done. I reply, the proper
appeal for moral beings, upon moral questions, is not to physical force,
but to the consciences of men. Let the wrong be set forth, but be set
forth in the spirit of love; and in this manner, if in any, will the
consciences of men be aroused to justice."

Argument, and "appeals to the consciences of men" should always be
resorted to in preference to "physical force;" but when they fail to
deter the wicked, force must be employed. I may reason with the robber
and the murderer, to persuade him to desist from his attempt to rob my
house, and murder my family; but if he refuse to listen to moral
appeals, I employ physical force,--I call in the strong arm of the law
to assist me; and if no other means can be found to save innocent life
that is assailed, the life of the assailant must be sacrificed.

"If," says Puffendorf, "some one treads the laws of peace under his
feet, forming projects which tend to my ruin, he could not, without the
highest degree of impudence, (impudentissime,) pretend that after this I
should consider him as a sacred person, who ought not to be touched; in
other words, that I should betray myself, and abandon the care of my own
preservation, in order to give way to the malice of a criminal, that he
may act with impunity and with full liberty. On the contrary, since he
shows himself unsociable towards me, and since he has placed himself in
a position which does not permit me safely to practice towards him the
duties of peace, I have only to think of preventing the danger which
menaces me; so that if I cannot do this without hurting him, he has to
accuse himself only, since he has reduced me to this necessity." _De
Jure