Private Ethics and Legislation can have but the same end, happiness. Their means, the actions prompted, must be nearly the same. Still they are different. There is no case where a man ought not to be guided by his own, or his fellow-creatures', happiness; but there are many cases where the legislature should not compel a man to perform such actions. The reason is that the Legislature works solely by Punishment (reward is seldom applied, and is not properly an act of legislation). Now, there are cases where the punishment of the political sanction ought not to be used; and if, in any of these cases, there is a propriety of using the punishments of private ethics (the moral or social sanction), this circumstance would indicate the line of division. First, then, as to the cases where punishment would be _groundless_. In such cases, neither legislation nor private ethics should interfere. Secondly. As to cases where it would be _inefficacious_, where punishment has no deterring motive power,--as in Infancy, Insanity, overwhelming danger, &c.,--the public and the private sanctions are also alike excluded. Thirdly. It is in the cases where Legislative punishment would be _unprofitable_, that we have the great field of Private Ethics. Punishment is unprofitable in two ways. First, when the danger of detection is so small, that nothing but enormous severity, on detection, would be of avail, as in the illicit commerce of the sexes, which has generally gone unpunished by law. Secondly, when there is danger of involving the innocent with the guilty, from inability to define the crime in precise language. Hence it is that rude behaviour, treachery, and ingratitude are not punished by law; and that in countries where the voice of the people controls the hand of the legislature, there is a great dread of making _defamation_, especially of the government, an offence at law. Private Ethics is not liable to the same difficulties as Legislation in dealing with such offences. Of the three departments of Moral Duty--Prudence, Probity, and Beneficence--the one that least requires and admits of being enforced by legislative punishment is the first--_Prudence_. It can only be through some defect of the understanding, if people are wanting in duty to themselves. Now, although a man may know little of himself, is it certain the legislator knows more? Would it be possible to extirpate drunkenness or fornication by legal punishment? All that can be done in this field is to subject the offences, in cases of notoriety, to a slight censure, so as to cover them with a slight shade of artificial disrepute, and thus give strength and influence to the moral sanction.