CHAPTER XVI.



DIVISION OF OFFENSES.



§ 1. Classes of Offences.



I. It is necessary, at the outset,[1] to make a distinction between such 

acts as are or may be, and such as ought to be offences.



Any act may be an offence, which they whom the community of are in the habit 

of obeying shall be pleased to make one: that to is, any act which they 

shall be pleased to prohibit or to punish. But, upon the principle of 

utility, such acts alone ought to be made offences, as the good of the 

community requires should be made so.



II. The good of the community cannot require, that any act should be made an 

offence, which is not liable. in some way or other, to be detrimental to the 

community. For in the case of such an act, all punishment is groundless.[2]



III. But if the whole assemblage of any number of individuals be considered 

as constituting an imaginary compound body, a community or political state; 

any act that is detrimental to any one or more of those members is, as to so 

much of its effects, detrimental to the state.



IV. An act cannot be detrimental to a state, but by being detrimental to 

some one or more of the individuals that compose it. But these individuals 

may either be assignable[3] or unassignable.



V. When there is any assignable individual to whom an offence is 

detrimental, that person may either be a person other than the offender, or 

the offender himself.



VI. Offences that are detrimental, in the first instance, to assignable 

persons other than the offender, may be termed by one common name, offences 

against individuals. And of these may be composed the 1st class of offences. 

To contrast them with offences of the 2nd and 4th classes, it may also 

sometimes be convenient to style them private offences. To contrast them at 

the same time with offences of the 3rd class, they may be styled private 

extra-regarding offences.



VII. When it appears, in general, that there are persons to whom the act in 

question may be detrimental, but such persons cannot be individually 

assigned, the circle within which it appears that they may be found, is 

either of less extent than that which comprises the whole community, or not. 

If of less, the persons comprised within this lesser circle may be 

considered for this purpose as composing a body of themselves; comprised 

within, but distinguishable from, the greater body of the whole community. 

The circumstance that constitutes the union between the members of this 

lesser body, may be either their residence within a particular place, or, in 

short, any other less explicit principle of union, which may serve to 

distinguish them from the remaining members of the community. In the first 

case, the act may be styled an offence against a neighbourhood: in the 

second, an offence against a particular class of persons in the community. 

Offenses, then, against a class or neighbourhood, may, together, constitute 

the 2nd class of offences.[4] To contrast them with private offences on the 

one hand, and public on the other, they may also be styled semi-public 

offences.



VIII. Offences, which in the first instance are detrimental to the offender 

himself, and to no one else, unless it be by their being detrimental to 

himself, may serve to compose a third class. To contrast them the better 

with offences of the first, second, and fourth classes, all which are of a 

transitive nature, they might be styled intransitive[5] offences; but still 

better, self-regarding.



IX. The fourth class may be composed of such acts as ought to be made 

offences, on account of the distant mischief which they threaten to bring 

upon an unassignable indefinite multitude of the whole number of 

individuals, of which the community is composed: although no particular 

individual should appear more likely to be a sufferer by them than another. 

These may be called public offences, or offences against the state.



X. A fifth class, or appendix, may be composed of such acts as, according to 

the circumstances in which they are committed, or and more particularly 

according to the purposes to which they are applied, may be detrimental in 

any one of the ways in which the act of one man can be detrimental to 

another. These may to be termed multiform, or heterogeneous offences.[6] 

Offences that are in this case may be reduced to two great heads: 1. 

Offences by falsehood: and 2. Offenses against trust.







1. This chapter is an attempt to put our ideas of offences into an exact 

method. The particular uses of method are various: but the general one is, 

to enable men to understand the things that are the subjects of it. To 

understand a thing, is to be acquainted with its qualities or properties. Of 

these properties, some are common to it with other things; the rest, 

peculiar. But the qualities which are peculiar to any one sort of thing are 

few indeed, in comparison with those which are common to it with other 

things. To make it known in respect of its difference, would therefore be 

doing little, unless it were made known also by its genus. To understand it 

perfectly, a man must therefore be informed of the points in which it agrees 

as well as of those in which it disagrees, with all other things. When a 

number of objects, composing a logical whole, are to be considered together 

all of these possessing with respect to one another a certain congruency or 

agreement denoted by a certain name, there is but one way of giving a 

perfect knowledge of their nature; and that is, by distributing them into a 

system of parcels, each of them a part, either of some other parcel, or, at 

any rate, of the common whole. This can only be done in the way of 

bipartition, dividing each superior branch into two, and but two, 

immediately subordinate ones; beginning with the logical whole, dividing 

that into two parts, then each of those parts into two others; and so on. 

These first-distinguished parts agree in respect of those properties which 

belong to the whole: they differ in respect of those properties which are 

peculiar to each. To divide the whole into more than two parcels at once, 

for example into three, would not answer the purpose; for, in fact, it is 

but two objects that the mind can compare together exactly at the same time. 

Thus then, let us endeavour to deal with offences; or rather, strictly 

speaking, with acts which possess such properties as seem to indicate them 

fit to be constituted offences. The task is arduous, and as yet at least, 

perhaps for ever, above our force. There is no speaking of objects but by 

their names: but the business of giving them names has always been prior to 

the true and perfect knowledge of their natures. Objects the most dissimilar 

have been spoken of and treated as if their properties were the same. 

Objects the most similar have been spoken of and treated as if they had 

scarce anything in common. Whatever discoveries may be made concerning them, 

how different soever their congruencies and disagreements maybe found to be 

from those which are indicated by their names, it is not without the utmost 

difficulty that any means can be found out of expressing those discoveries 

by a conformable set of names. Change the import of the old names, and you 

are in perpetual danger of being misunderstood: introduce an entire new set 

of names, and you are sure not to be understood at all. Complete success 

then, is, as yet at least, unattainable. But an attempt, though imperfect, 

may have its use: and, at the worst, it may accelerate the arrival of that 

perfect system, the possession of which will be the happiness of some 

maturer age. Gross ignorance descries no difficulties; imperfect knowledge 

finds them out, and struggles with them: it must be perfect knowledge that 

overcomes them.



2. See ch. xiii. [Cases unmeet], § ii. 1.



3. That is, either by name, or at least by description, in such manner as to 

be sufficiently distinguished from all others; for instance, by the 

circumstance of being the owner or occupier of such and such goods. See B. 

I. tit. [Personation], supra, ch. xii. [Consequences], xv.



4. With regard to offences against a class or neighbourhood, it is evident, 

that the fewer the individuals are, of which such class is composed, and the 

narrower that neighbourhood is, the more likely are the persons, to whom the 

offense is detrimental, to become assignable, insomuch that, in some cases, 

it may be difficult to determine concerning a given offense, whether it be 

an offense against individuals, or against a class or neighbourhood. It is 

evident also, that the larger the class or neighbourhood is, the more it 

approaches to a coincidence with the great body of the state. The three 

classes, therefore, are liable to a certain degree, to run into one another, 

and be confounded. But this is no more than what is the case, more or less, 

with all those ideal compartments under which men are wont to distribute 

objects for the convenience of discourse.



5. See ch. vii. [Actions], xiii.



6. 1. Offences by falsehood: 2. Offenses against trust. See also par. xx. to 

xxx. and par. lxvi. Maturer views have suggested the feasibility, and the 

means, of ridding the system of this anomalous excrescence. Instead of 

considering these as so many divisions of offences, divided into genera a 

correspondent and collateral to the several genera distinguished by other 

appellation they may be considered as so many specific differences, 

respectively applicable to those genera. Thus, in the case of a simple 

personal injury, in the operation of which a plan of falsehood has been 

employed: it seems more simple and more natural, to consider the offense 

thus committed as a particular species or modification of the genus of 

offence termed a simple personal injury, than to consider the simple 

personal injury, when effected by such means, as a modification of the 

division of offences entitled Offences through falsehood. By this means the 

circumstances of the intervention of falsehood as an instrument, and of the 

existence of a particular obligation of the nature of a trust, will be 

reduced to a par with various other classes of circumstances capable of 

affording grounds of modification commonly of aggravation or extenuation, to 

various genera of offences: instance, Premeditation, and conspiracy, on the 

one hand; Provocation received, and intoxication, on the other. This class 

will appear, but too plainly, as a kind of botch in comparison of the rest. 

But such is the fate of science and more particularly of the moral branch; 

the distribution of things must in a great measure be dependent on their 

names: arrangement, the work of mature rejection, must be ruled by 

nomenclature, the work of popular caprice.



In the book of the laws, offences must therefore be treated of as much as 

possible under their accustomed names. Generical terms, which are in 

continual use, and which express ideas for which there are no other terms in 

use, cannot safely be discarded. When any such occur, which cannot be 

brought to quadrate with such a plan of classification as appears to be most 

convenient upon the whole, what then is to be done? There seems to be but 

one thing, which is, to retain them, and annex them to the regular part of 

the system in the form of an appendix. Though they cannot, when entire, be 

made to rank under any of the classes established in the rest of the system, 

the divisions to which they give title may be broken down into lesser 

divisions, which may not be alike intractable. By this means, how discordant 

soever with the rest of the system they may appear to be at first sight, on 

a closer inspection they may be found conformable



This must inevitably be the case with the names of offences, which are so 

various and universal in their nature, as to be capable, each of them of 

doing whatever mischief can be done by any other kind or kinds of offences 

whatsoever. Offences of this description may well be called anomalous.



Such offences, it is plain, cannot but show themselves equally intractable 

under every kind of system. Upon whatever principle the system be 

constructed, they cannot, any of them, with any degree of propriety, be 

confined to any one division. If, therefore, they constitute a blemish in 

the present system, it is such a blemish as could not be avoided but at the 

expense of a greater. The class they are here thrown into will traverse, in 

its subordinate ramifications, the other classes and divisions of the 

present system: true, but so would they of any other. An irregularity, and 

that but a superficial one, is a less evil than continual error and 

contradiction But even this slight deviation, which the fashion of language 

seemed to render unavoidable at the outset, we shall soon find occasion to 

correct as we advance. For though the first great parcels into which the 

offences of this class are divided are not referable, any of them, to any of 

the former classes, yet the subsequent lesser subdivisions are.