Sympathy or Benevolence, and the semi-social motives of Love
of Amity and Love of Reputation. [He does not say here whether Sympathy
is a motive grounded on the pleasure it brings, or a motive
irrespective of the pleasure; although from other places we may infer
that he inclines to the first view.]

Private Ethics and Legislation can have but the same end, happiness.
Their means, the actions prompted, must be nearly the same. Still they
are different. There is no case where a man ought not to be guided by
his own, or his fellow-creatures', happiness; but there are many cases
where the legislature should not compel a man to perform such actions.
The reason is that the Legislature works solely by Punishment (reward
is seldom applied, and is not properly an act of legislation). Now,
there are cases where the punishment of the political sanction ought
not to be used; and if, in any of these cases, there is a propriety of
using the punishments of private ethics (the moral or social sanction),
this circumstance would indicate the line of division.

First, then, as to the cases where punishment would be _groundless_. In
such cases, neither legislation nor private ethics should interfere.

Secondly. As to cases where it would be _inefficacious_, where
punishment has no deterring motive power,--as in Infancy, Insanity,
overwhelming danger, &c.,--the public and the private sanctions are
also alike excluded.

Thirdly. It is in the cases where Legislative punishment would be
_unprofitable_, that we have the great field of Private Ethics.
Punishment is unprofitable in two ways. First, when the danger of
detection is so small, that nothing but enormous severity, on
detection, would be of avail, as in the illicit commerce of the sexes,
which has generally gone unpunished by law. Secondly, when there is
danger of involving the innocent with the guilty, from inability to
define the crime in precise language. Hence it is that rude behaviour,
treachery, and ingratitude are not punished by law; and that in
countries where the voice of the people controls the hand of the
legislature, there is a great dread of making _defamation_, especially
of the government, an offence at law.

Private Ethics is not liable to the same difficulties as Legislation in
dealing with such offences.

Of the three departments of Moral Duty--Prudence, Probity, and
Beneficence--the one that least requires and admits of being enforced
by legislative punishment