But for what purpose is the punishment applied? Is it applied to amend the manners of the criminal, and thus render him a better subject? No, for if you banish him, he can no longer be a subject, and you can no longer therefore be solicitous for his morals. Add to this, that if you banish him to a place, where he is to experience the hardships of want and hunger (so powerfully does hunger compel men to the perpetration of crimes) you force him rather to corrupt, than amend his manners, and to be wicked, when he might otherwise be just. Is it applied then, that others may be deterred from the same proceedings, and that crimes may become less frequent? No, but that _avarice_ may be gratified; that the prince may experience the emoluments of the sale: for, horrid and melancholy thought! the more crimes his subjects commit, the richer is he made; the more _abandoned_ the subject, the _happier_ is the prince! Neither can we allow that the punishment thus applied, tends in any degree to answer _publick happiness_; for if men can be sentenced to slavery, right or wrong; if shadows can be turned into substances, and virtues into crimes; it is evident that none can be happy, because none can be secure. But if the punishment is infinitely greater than the offence, (which has been shewn before) and if it is inflicted, neither to amend the criminal, nor to deter others from the same proceedings, nor to advance, in any degree, the happiness of the publick, it is scarce necessary to observe, that it is totally unjust, since it is repugnant to _reason_, the dictates of _nature_, and the very principles of _government_. * * * * * CHAP. VII. We come now to the fourth and last order of slaves, to _prisoners of war_. As the _sellers_ lay a particular stress on this order of men, and infer much, from its _antiquity_, in support of the justice of their cause, we shall examine the principle, on which it subsisted among the ancients. But as this principle was the same among all nations, and as a citation from many of their histories would not be less tedious than unnecessary, we shall select the example of the Romans for the consideration of the case. The law, by which prisoners of war were said to be sentenced to servitude, was the _law of nations_[043]. It was so called from the universal concurrence of nations in the custom. It had two points in view, the _persons_ of the _captured_, and their _effects_; both of which it immediately sentenced, without any of the usual forms of law, to be the property of the _captors_.