It may be said, in some exceptional emergency, “but many men are now starving; ought not the theft of food, on the principle of prevention, to be now punished with extreme severity, as other wise it is likely to become common?” Or in general, ought not severity to increase with {231} temptation or provocation, as a greater deterrent is needed to counterbalance this? The case in which the temptation or provocation is exceptional has just been dealt with. But if abnormal temptation or provocation becomes common, as in a famine, or in some excited condition of public feeling, then it must be remembered that not one right only, but the system of rights as such, is what the State has to maintain. If starvation is common, some readjustment of rights, or at least some temporary protection of the right to live, is the remedy indicated, and not, or not solely, increased severity in dealing with theft. [1] If provocation becomes common, then the rights of those provoked must be remembered, and the provocation itself perhaps made punishable, like the singing of faction songs in Ireland. Punishment is to protect rights, not to encourage wrongs. [1] Though for the sake of all parties, and to avoid temptation, a strong policing of threatened districts may be desirable in such circumstances. Thus, we have seen the true nature and aims of punishment as following from the aim of the State in maintaining the system of rights instrumental to the fullest life. The three main aspects of punishment which we have considered are really inseparable, and each, if properly explained, expands so as to include the others. We may, in conclusion, sum up the whole theory of State action in the formula which we inherit from Rousseau--that Sovereignty is the exercise of the General Will. First. All State action is General in its bearing and justification, even if particular, or rather {232} concrete, in its details. It is embodied in a _system_ of rights, and there is no element of it which is not determined by a bearing upon a public interest. The verification of this truth, throughout, for example, our English system of public and private Acts of Parliament, would run parallel to the logical theory of the Universal Judgment as it passes into Judgments whose subjects are proper names. But the immediate point is that no rights are absolute, or detached from the whole, but all have their warrant in the aim of the whole, which at the same time implies their adjustment and regulation according to general principles. This generality of law is practically an immense protection to individuals against arbitrary interference. It makes every regulation strike a class and not a single person.