“But as the theory of the laws is honorable to the humanity which has been able to grasp it, so the practical application of the laws has been most distressing, when, after the observance of them has been recommended, it is necessary to pass on to the punishments decreed for the offenses which violate them. The passions which self-interest unceasingly incites often necessitate this grievous extremity. Then we see men authorized by general consent to exercise an inflexible rigor upon their fellows. We hear justice pronounce sentences which would pass for cruel if they were not indispensable. It makes use of prisons, executioners, gallows. Liberty and even life become pledges of which justice deprives men at pleasure when they abuse them. To make good the losses which the state suffers from the crimes that disturb it, it comes back upon the criminals, and consequently suffers almost equally from the crime and from the punishment.” [14] VII. P. H. D. D’HOLBACH. In the third section of his “Système social”, under the heading, “The Influence of Government upon Morals”, Holbach, in treating of the causes of crime says among other things: “In China they punish the mandarin in the department in which a great crime has been committed. A bad government has its own negligence or its own injustice to blame for the great number of malefactors who are found in a state. The multiplicity of criminals proclaims an administration as tyrannical and careless. The severity of taxes, the vexations and hardships inflicted by the rich and great multiply the number of the unfortunate, whom poverty often reduces to despair and who avail themselves of crime as the promptest means of escape from their condition. If wealth is the mother of vices, poverty is the mother of crimes. When a state is badly governed and wealth is too unequally divided, so that millions of men lack the necessaries of life, while a small number of citizens are surfeited with luxuries, there we commonly see a great number of criminals, whose number punishments do not diminish. If a government punishes the unfortunate it leaves undisturbed the vices that are leading the state to its ruin; it erects gibbets for the poor, whereas by bringing men to poverty it has itself made thieves, assassins, and criminals of every kind; it punishes crime, while it continually invites men to commit crime.” [15]