by the maintainers of law for protecting the right in question by associating terror with its violation. This, however, does not alter the moral duty, on the part of the society authorising the punishment, to make its punishments just by making the system of rights which it maintains just. The justice of the punishment depends on the justice of the general system of rights; not merely on the propriety with reference to social well-being of maintaining this or that particular right which the crime punished violates, but on the question whether the social organisation in which a criminal has lived and acted is one that has given him a fair chance of not being a criminal. 190. We are apt to think that the justice of a punishment depends on some sort of equality between its magnitude and that of the crime punished, but this notion arises from a confusion of punishment as inflicted by the state for a wrong done to society with compensation to the individual for damage done him. Neither a crime nor its punishment admits of strictly quantitative measurement. It may be said, indeed, that the greater the crime the heavier should be its punishment, but this is only true if by the 'heavier punishment' is understood that with which most terror is associated in the popular imagination, and if the conception of the 'greater crime' is taken on the one hand to exclude any estimation of the degree of moral guilt, and, on the other hand, to be determined by an estimate not only of the importance in the social system of the right violated by the crime, but of the amount of terror that needs to be associated with the crime in the general apprehension in order to its prevention. But when its terms are thus understood, the statement that the greater the crime the heavier should be its punishment, becomes an identical proposition. It amounts to this, that the crime which requires most terror to be associated with it in order to its prevention should have most terror thus associated with it. 191. But why do the terms 'heavier punishment' and 'greater crime' need to be thus understood? Why should not the 'greater crime' be understood to mean the crime implying most moral wickedness, or partly this, partly the crime which violates the more important kind of right? Why should a consideration of the amount of terror that needs to be associated with it in order to its prevention enter into the determination of the 'greater crime' at all? Why again should not the 'heavier punishment' mean simply that in which the person punished actually suffers most pain? Why should it be taken to mean that with which most terror is associated upon the contemplation? In short, is not the proposition in question at once true and significant in the sense that the crime which implies the most moral depravity, or violates the most important right (such as the right to life), or which does both, should be visited with the punishment that involves most pain to the sufferer?