The rationale of punishment Author:Jeremy Bentham Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER X. POPULARITY. To prove that an institution is agreeable to the principle of utility, is to prove, as far as can be proved, that the people ought t... more »o like it: but whether they will like it or no after all, is another question. They would like it if, in their judgments, they suffered themselves to be uniformly and exclusively governed by that principle. By this principle they do govern themselves in proportion as they are humanised and enlightened; accordingly, the deference they pay to its dictates is more uniform in this intelligent and favoured country than perhaps in any other. I speak here, taking the great mass of the people upon this occasion, as they ought to be taken upon every occasion, into the account; and not confining my views, as is too commonly the case, to men of rank and education. Even in this country, however, their acquiescence is far from being as yet altogether uniform and undeviating: in some instances their judgments are still warped by antipathies or prejudices unconnected with the principle of utility, and therefore irreconcileable to reason. They are apt to bear antipathy to certain offences without regard to even their imputed mischievousness, and to entertain a prejudice against certain punishments without regard to their eligibility with respect to the ends of punishment. The variety of capricious objections to which each particular mode of punishment is exposed,has no other limits than the fecundity of the imagination : with some slight exceptions, they may however be ranged under one or other of the following heads :—Liberty—Decency—Religion— Humanity. What I mean by a capricious objection, is an objection which derives the whole of its apparent value from the impression that is apt to be made by the use of those hallowed expressi...« less