Now there are but three Things which Men fear in this Life, _viz._ Shame, Poverty, and Bodily Pain, and consequently but three Sorts of Punishments, which the _Legislature_ can inflict. The first of these, indeed, might be omitted; for Shame is so very little in the Power of the Laws, that it hardly deserves the Name of a Penalty. If the Pillory, and such like infamous Punishments, are more terrible for the Shame that attends them, than for the bodily Pain, it is not because such a Posture of a Man’s Body, with his Neck through a Hole, is in itself ignominious, or that any Law can make it so; but because it publishes to the World, that a Man has been prov’d to commit such a certain Action, in its own Nature scandalous, which he is asham’d to have thus publickly made known. The truth is, “Honour and Dishonour being only the different Opinions of Mankind, as to the Good or Evil of any Action; and these Opinions in the Mind arising, as Dr. _Clarke_ well observes, from the natural Fitness or Unfitness of the Actions themselves, cannot be alter’d or determin’d by any _Secular Force_.” And that they are entirely out of the Power of the _Legislature_, is evident in the Instance of _Duelling_; where a Man often receives Honour for a _Breach_ of the Law, nay is forced to _break_ it in _Defence_ of his Honour. The utmost Scandal, therefore, which the Laws can affix to any Action, is to make a full and open Publication of the Fact: Now it is evident that this Publication cannot have a sufficient Influence over Mens Minds to deter them from Wenching, a Crime which meets with so favourable a Reception in the Eye of the World, that young Men are not asham’d to boast of it.