| Rewards and Punishments:...: |
What I mean by the unification of punishments is that punishments should know no degree or grade, but that from ministers of state and generals down to great officers and ordinary folk, whosoever does not obey the king's commands, violates the interdicts of the state, or rebels against the statutes fixed by the ruler, should be guilty of death and should not be pardoned. Merit acquired in the past should not cause a decrease in the punishment for demerit later, nor should good behaviour in the past cause any derogation of the law for wrong done later. If loyal ministers and filial sons do wrong, they should be judged according to the full measure of their guilt, and if amongst the officials who have to maintain the law and to uphold an office, there are those who do not carry out the king's law, they are guilty of death and should not be pardoned, but their punishment should be extended to their family for three generations. Colleagues who, knowing their offence, inform their superiors will themselves escape punishment. In neither high nor low offices should there be an automatic hereditary succession to the office, rank, lands or emoluments of officials. Therefore do I say that if there are severe penalties that extend to the whole family, people will not dare to try (how far they can go), and as they dare not try, no punishments will be necessary. The former kings, in making their interdicts, did not put to death, or cut off people's feet, or brand people's faces, because they sought to harm those people, but with the object of prohibiting wickedness and stopping crime; for there is no better means of prohibiting wickedness and stopping crime than by making punishments heavy. If punishments are heavy and rigorously applied, then people will not dare to try (how far they can go), with the result that, in the state, there will be no people punished. Because there are no people punished in the state, I say that if one understands punishments, there is no capital punishment. |
