ersecute an innovation, it stands upon quite other grounds, and it has
all the prejudices and presumptions on its side. It puts its own
authority, not only of compulsion, but prepossession, the veneration of
past age, as well as the activity of the present time, against the
opinion only of a private man or set of men. If there be no reason,
there is at least some consistency in its proceedings. Commanding to
constancy, it does nothing but that of which it sets an example itself.
But an opinion at once new and persecuting is a monster; because, in the
very instant in which it takes a liberty of change, it does not leave to
you even a liberty of perseverance.

Is, then, no improvement to be brought into society? Undoubtedly; but
not by compulsion,--but by encouragement,--but by countenance, favor,
privileges, which are powerful, and are lawful instruments. The coercive
authority of the state is limited to what is necessary for its
existence. To this belongs the whole order of criminal law. It considers
as crimes (that is, the object of punishment) trespasses against those
rules for which society was instituted. The law punishes delinquents,
not because they are not good men, but because they are intolerably
wicked. It does bear, and must, with the vices and the follies of men,
until they actually strike at the root of order. This it does in things
actually moral. In all matters of speculative improvement the case is
stronger, even where the matter is properly of human cognizance. But to
consider an averseness to improvement, the not arriving at perfection,
as a crime, is against all tolerably correct jurisprudence; for, if the
resistance to improvement should be great and any way general, they
would in effect give up the necessary and substantial part in favor of
the perfection and the finishing.

But, say the abettors of our penal laws, this old possessed superstition
is such in its principles, that society, on its general principles,
cannot subsist along with it. Could a man think such an objection
possible, if he had not actually heard it made,--an objection
contradicted, not by hypothetical reasonings, but the clear evidence of
the most decisive facts? Society not only exists, but flourishes at this
hour, with this superstition, in many countries, under every form of
government,--in some established, in some tolerated, in others upon an
equal footing. And was there no civil society at all in these kingdoms
before the