15. The liberty of subjects consists not in being exempt from the laws of the city, or that they who have the supreme power cannot make what laws they have a mind to. But because all the motions and actions of subjects are never circumscribed by laws, nor can be, by reason of their variety; it is necessary that there be infinite cases which are neither commanded nor prohibited, but every man may either do or not do them as he lists himself. In these, each man is said to enjoy his liberty; and in this sense liberty is to be understood in this place, namely, for that part of natural right which is granted and left to subjects by the civil laws. As water inclosed on all hands with banks, stands still and corrupts; having no bounds, it spreads too largely, and the more passages it finds the more freely it takes its current; so subjects, if they might do nothing without the commands of the law, would grow dull and unwieldy; if all, they would be dispersed; and the more is left undetermined by the laws, the more liberty they enjoy. Both extremes are faulty; for laws were not invented to take away, but to direct men’s actions; even as nature ordained the banks, not to stay, but to guide the course of the stream. The measure of this liberty is to be taken from the subjects’ and the city’s good. Wherefore, in the first place, it is against the charge of those who command and have the authority of making laws, that there should be more laws than necessarily serve for good of the magistrate and his subjects. For since men are wont commonly to debate what to do or not to do, by natural reason rather than any knowledge of the laws, where there are more laws than can easily be remembered, and whereby such things are forbidden as reason of itself prohibits not of necessity, they must through ignorance, without the least evil intention, fall within the compass of laws, as gins laid to entrap their harmless liberty; which supreme commanders are bound to preserve for their subjects by the laws of nature. [Sidenote: That greater punishments must not be inflicted, than are prescribed by the laws.]