Principles of Morals and

Principles of Morals and Legislation/167
renders him an object meet for punishment or reward, the eyes of those,
whosoever they be, to whom the management of these engines is en-
trusted cannot always see, nor, where it is punishment that is to be ad-
ministered, can their hands be always sure to reach him. To supply these
deficiencies in point of power, it is thought necessary, or at least useful
(without which the truth of the doctrine would be nothing to the pur-
pose), to inculcate into the minds of the people the belief of the existence
of a power applicable to the same purposes, and not liable to the same
deficiencies: the power of a supreme invisible being, to whom a disposi-
tion of contributing to the same ends to which the several institutions
already mentioned are calculated to contribute, must for this purpose be
ascribed. It is of course expected that this power will, at one time or
other, be employed in the promoting of those ends: and to keep up and
strengthen this expectation among men, is spoken of as being the em-
ployment of a kind of allegorical personage, feigned, as before, for con-
venience of discourse, and styled religion. To diminish, then, or misap-
ply the influence of religion, is pro tanto to diminish or misapply what
power the state has of combating with effect any of the before enumer-
ated kinds of offences; that is, all kinds of offences whatsoever. Acts
that appear to have this tendency may be styled offences against reli-
gion. Of these then may be composed the tenth division of the class of
offences against the state,
XIX. If there be any acts which appear liable to affect the state in
any one or more of the above ways, by operating in prejudice of the
external security of the state, or of its internal security; of the public
force; of the increase of the national felicity; of the public wealth; of the
rational population; of the national wealth; of the sovereignty; or of
religion; at the same time that it is not clear in which of all these ways
they will affect it most, nor but that, according to contingencies, they
may affect it in one of these ways only or in another; such acts may be
collected together under a miscellaneous division by themselves, and
styled offences against the national interest in general. Of these then
may be composed the eleventh and last division of the class of offences
against the state.
XX. We come now to class the fifth: consisting of multiform of-
fences. These, as has been already intimated, are either. offences by
falsehood, or offences concerning trust. Under the head of offences by
falsehood, may be comprehended, 1. Simple falsehoods. 2. Forgery. 3.
Personation. 4. Perjury. Let us observe in what particulars these four

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168/Jeremy Bentham
kinds of falsehood agree, and in what they differ.
XXI. Offences by falsehood, however diversified in other particu-
lars, have this in common, that they consist in some abuse of the faculty
of discourse, or rather, as we shall see hereafter, of the faculty of influ-
encing the sentiment of belief in other men, whether by discourse or
otherwise. The use of discourse is to influence belief, and that in such
manner as to give other men to understand that things are as they are
really. Falsehoods, of whatever kind they be, agree in this: that they give
men to understand that things are otherwise than as in reality they are.
XXII. Personation, forgery, and perjury, are each of them distin-
guished from other modes of uttering falsehood by certain special cir-
cumstances. When a falsehood is not accompanied by any of those cir-
cumstances, it maybe styled simple falsehood. These circumstances are,
1. The form in which the falsehood is uttered. 2. The circumstance of its
relating or not to the identity of the person of him who utters it. 3. The
solemnity of the occasion on which it is uttered. The particular applica-
tion of these distinctive characters may more commodiously be reserved
for another place.
XXIII. We come now to the sub-divisions of offences by falsehood.
These will bring us back into the regular track of analysis, pursued,
without deviation, through the four preceding classes.
By whatever means a mischief is brought about, whether falsehood
be or be not of the number, the individuals liable to be affected by it
must either be assignable or unassignable. If assignable, there are but
four material articles in respect to which they can be affected: to wit,
their persons, their properties, their reputations, and their conditions in
life. The case is the same, if, though unassignable, they are comprisable
in any class subordinate to that which is composed of the whole number
of members of the state. If the falsehood tend to the detriment of the
whole state, it can only be by operating in one or other of the characters,
which every act that is an offence against the state must assume; viz.,
that of an offence against external Security, against justice, against the
preventive branch of the police, against the public force, against the
increase of the national felicity, against the public wealth, against the
national population, against the national wealth, against the sovereignty
of the state, or against its religion.
XXIV. It is the common property, then, of the offences that belong
to this division, to run over the same ground that is occupied by those of
the preceding classes. But some of them, as we shall see, are apt, on

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