punishment. It is only in a series of crimes differing as to degree, that the means of securing this equality can be described; and in this case the respective punishments must be arranged in corresponding gradations. When, therefore, according to what we before observed, the absolute measure of punishment (for instance, of the highest punishment) is to be determined according to the amount of evil done, and that which is required to prevent the future commission of the crime, the relative measure of the others (when the highest, or indeed any, punishment has once been fixed) must be determined according to the degree in which the respective crimes are greater or less than that which it was designed to prevent by the first punishment decided on. The most severe punishments, therefore, should be allotted to those crimes which really infringe on the rights of others, and the milder ones to transgressions of those laws which are simply designed to prevent such infringements, however important and necessary those laws may be of themselves. By such a course the idea is at the same time banished from the minds of the citizens that they are treated arbitrarily by the State, and that its conduct towards them is not grounded on proper motives—a prejudice easily engendered where severe punishments are inflicted on actions which either really have only a remote influence on security, or whose connection with the latter is less easy to understand. Among the crimes first mentioned, those must be visited with the severest punish- ment which attack directly the rights of the State itself; since he who shows no regard for the rights of the State, shows that he does not respect those of his fellow-citizens, whose security depends upon the integrity of the former. When crimes and punishments are thus generally apportioned by the law, the penal enactments so determined must be applied to single crimes. With regard to this application, the strict principles of right decide that the pu-
