ES (XVI.), and to the Limits of the Penal
Branch of Jurisprudence (XVII.). The two first subjects--Punishments
and Offences--are interesting chiefly in regard to Legislation. They
have also a bearing on Morals; inasmuch as society, in its private
administration of punishments, ought, no less than the Legislator, to
be guided by sound scientific principles.

As respects Punishment, he marks off (1) cases where it is
_groundless_; (2) where it is _inefficacious_, as in Infancy, Insanity,
Intoxication, &c.; (3) cases where it is _unprofitable_; and (4) cases
where it is _needless_. It is under this last herd that he excludes
from punishment the dissemination of what may be deemed pernicious
principles. Punishment is needless here, because the end can be served
by reply and exposure.

The first part of Chapter XVII. is entitled the 'Limits between Private
Ethics and the Art of Legislation;' and a short account of it will
complete the view of the author's Ethical Theory.

Ethics at large, is defined the art of directing men's actions to the
production of the greatest possible quantity of happiness, on the part
of those whose interest is in view, Now, these actions may be a man's
own actions, in which case they are styled the _art of self-government_,
or _private ethics_. Or they may be the actions of other agents, namely,
(1) Other human beings, and (2) Other Animals, whose interests Bentham
considers to have been disgracefully overlooked by jurists as well as
by mankind generally.

In so far as a man's happiness depends on his own conduct, he may be
said to _owe a duty to himself_; the quality manifested in discharge of
this branch of duty (if duty it is to be called) is PRUDENCE. In so far
as he affects by his conduct the interests of those about him, he is
under _a duty to others_. The happiness of others may be consulted in
two ways. First, negatively, by forbearing to diminish it; this is
called PROBITY. Secondly, in a positive way, by studying to increase
it; which is expressed by BENEFICENCE.

But now the question occurs, how is it that under Private Ethics (or
apart from legislation and religion) a man can be tinder a motive to
consult other people's happiness? By what obligations can he be bound
to _probity_ and _beneficence_? A man can have no _adequate_ motives
for consulting any interests but his own. Still there are motives for
making us consult the happiness of others, namely, the purely social
motive of