16. It is a great part of that _liberty_, which is harmless to civil government and necessary for each subject to live happily, that there be no penalties dreaded but what they may both foresee and look for; and this is done, where there are either no punishments at all defined by the laws, or greater not required than are defined. Where there are none defined, there he that hath first broken the law, expects an indefinite or arbitrary punishment; and his fear is supposed boundless, because it relates to an unbounded evil. Now the law of nature commands them who are not subject to any civil laws, by what we have said in chap. III. art. 11, and therefore supreme commanders, that in taking revenge and punishing they must not so much regard the past evil as the future good; and they sin, if they entertain any other measure in arbitrary punishment than the public benefit. But where the punishment is defined; either by a law prescribed, as when it is set down in plain words that _he that shall do thus or thus, shall suffer so and so_; or by practice, as when the penalty, not by any law prescribed, but arbitrary from the beginning, is afterward determined by the punishment of the first delinquent; (for natural equity commands that equal transgressors be equally punished); there to impose a greater penalty than is defined by the law, is against the law of nature. For the end of punishment is not to compel the will of man, but to fashion it, and to make it such as he would have it who hath set the penalty. And deliberation is nothing else but a weighing, as it were in scales, the conveniences and inconveniences of the fact we are attempting; where that which is more weighty, doth necessarily according to its inclination prevail with us. If therefore the legislator doth set a less penalty on a crime, than will make our fear more considerable with us than our lust, that excess of lust above the fear of punishment, whereby sin is committed, is to be attributed to the legislator, that is to say, to the supreme; and therefore if he inflict a greater punishment than himself hath determined in his laws, he punisheth that in another in which he sinned himself. [Sidenote: Subjects must have right restored to them against corrupt judges.]