Principles of Morals and

148/Jeremy Bentham
more, as far as the difference extends, it will be needless; it will there-
fore be thrown away also in that case.
The first property, therefore, that ought to be given to a lot of punish-
ment, is that of being variable in point of quantity, in conformity to
every variation which can take place in either the profit or mischief of
the offense. This property might, perhaps, be termed, in a single word,
variability.
III. A second property, intimately connected with the former, may
be styled equability. It will avail but little, that a mode of punishment
(proper in all other respects) has been established by the legislator; and
that capable of being screwed up or let down to any degree that can be
required; if, after all, whatever degree of it be pitched upon, that same
degree shall be liable, according to circumstances, to produce a very
heavy degree of pain, or a very slight one, or even none at all. In this
case, as in the former, if circumstances happen one way, there will be a
great deal of pain produced which will be needless: if the other way,
there will be no pain at all applied, or none that will be efficacious. A
punishment, when liable to this irregularity, may be styled an unequable
one: when free from it, an equable one. The quantity of pain produced
by the punishment will, it is true, depend in a considerable degree upon
circumstances distinct from the nature of the punishment itself: upon
the condition which the offender is in, with respect to the circumstances
by which a man’s sensibility is liable to be influenced. But the influence
of these very circumstances will in many cases be reciprocally influ-
enced by the nature of the punishment: in other words, the pain which is
produced by any mode of punishment, will be the joint effect of the
punishment which is applied to him, and the circumstances in which he
is exposed to it. Now there are some punishments, of which the effect
may be liable to undergo a greater alteration by the influence of such
foreign circumstances, than the effect of other punishments is liable to
undergo. So far, then, as this is the case, equability or unequability may
be regarded as properties belonging to the punishment itself.
IV. An example of a mode of punishment which is apt to be
unequable, is that of banishment, when the locus a quo (or place the
party is banished from) is some determinate place appointed by the law,
which perhaps the offender cares not whether he ever see or no. This is
also the case with pecuniary, or quasi-pecuniary punishment, when it
respects some particular species of property, which the offender may
have been possessed of, or not, as it may happen. All these punishments

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Principles of Morals and Legislation/149
may be split down into parcels, and measured out with the utmost nicety:
being divisible by time, at least, if by nothing else. They are not, there-
fore, any of them defective in point of variability: and yet, in many
cases, this defect in point of equability may make them as unfit for use
as if they were.
V. The third rule of proportion was, that where two offenses come
in competition, the punishment for the greater offenses must be suffi-
cient to induce a man to prefer the less. Now, to be sufficient for this
purpose, it must be evidently and uniformly greater: greater, not in the
eyes of some men only, but of all men who are liable to be in a situation
to take their choice between the two offenses; that is, in effect, of all
mankind. In other words, the two punishments must be perfectly com-
mensurable. Hence arises a third property, which may be termed com-
mensurability: to wit, with reference to other punishments.
VI. But punishments of different kinds are in very few instances
uniformly greater one than another; especially when the lowest degrees
of that which is ordinarily the greater, are compared with the highest
degrees of that which is ordinarily the less: in other words, punishments
of different kinds are in few instances uniformly commensurable. The
only certain and universal means of making two lots of punishment per-
fectly commensurable, is by making the lesser an ingredient in the com-
position of the greater. This may be done in either of two ways. 1. By
adding to the lesser punishment another quantity of punishment of the
same kind. 2. By adding to it another quantity of a different kind. The
latter mode is not less certain than the former: for though one cannot
always be absolutely sure, that to the same person a given punishment
will appear greater than another given punishment; yet one may be al-
ways absolutely sure, that any given punishment, so as it does but come
into contemplation, will appear greater than none at all.
VII. Again: Punishment cannot act any farther than in as far as the
idea of it, and of its connection with the offense, is present in the mind.
The idea of it, if not present, cannot act at all; and then the punishment
itself must be inefficacious. Now, to be present, it must be remembered,
and to be remembered it must have been learnt. But of all punishments
that can be imagined, there are none of which the connection with the
offense is either so easily learnt, or so efficaciously remembered, as
those of which the idea is already in part associated with some part of
the idea of the offense: which is the case when the one and the other have
some circumstance that belongs to them in common. When this is the

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