Of Sanctuaries.



ARE sanctuaries just? Is a convention between nations mutually to give up 

their criminals useful?



In the whole extent of a political state there should be no place 

independent of the laws. Their power should follow every subject, as the 

shadow follows the body. Sanctuaries and impunity differ only in degree, and 

as the effect of punishments depends more on their certainty than their 

greatness, men are more strongly invited to crimes by sanctuaries than they 

are deterred by punishment. To increase the number of sanctuaries is to 

erect so many little sovereignties; for where the laws have no power, new 

bodies will be formed in opposition to the public good, and a spirit 

established contrary to that of the state. History informs us, that from the 

use of sanctuaries have arisen the greatest revolutions in kingdoms and in 

opinions.



Some have pretended, that in whatever country a crime, that is, an action 

contrary to the laws of society, be committed, the criminal may be justly 

punished for it in any other; as if the character of subject were indelible, 

or synonymous with or worse than that of slave; as if a man could live in 

one country and be subject to the laws of another, or be accountable for his 

actions to two sovereigns, or two codes of laws often contradictory. There 

are also those who think, that an act of cruelty committed, for example, at 

Constantinople may be punished at Paris, for this abstracted reason, that he 

who offends humanity should have enemies in all mankind, and be the object 

of universal execration; as if judges were to be the knights-errant of human 

nature in general, rather than guardians of particular conventions between 

men. The place of punishment can certainly be no other than that where the 

crime was committed; for the necessity of punishing an individual for the 

general good, subsists there, and there only. A villain, if he has not broke 

through the conventions of a society, of which, by my supposition, he was 

not a member, may be feared, and by force banished and excluded from that 

society, but ought not to be formally punished by the laws, which were only 

intended to maintain the social compact, and not to punish the intrinsic 

malignity of actions.



Whether it be useful that nations should mutually deliver up their 

criminals? Although the certainty of there being no part of the earth where 

crimes are not punished, may be a means of preventing them, I shall not 

pretend to determine this question, until laws more conformable to the 

necessities, and rights of humanity, and until milder punishments, and the 

abolition of the arbitrary power of opinion, shall afford security to virtue 

and innocence when oppressed; and until tyranny shall be confined to the 

plains of Asia, and Europe acknowledge the universal empire of reason by 

which the interests of sovereigns and subjects are best united.