[mjklin]

“Suppose, for example, that a legislator should feel himself authorized to undertake the extirpation of drunkenness and fornication by direct laws. He would have to begin by a multitude of regulations. The first inconvenience would therefore be a complexity of laws. The easier it is to conceal these vices, the more necessary it would be to resort to severity of punishment, in order to destroy by the terror of examples the constantly recurring hope of impunity. This excessive rigour of laws forms a second inconvenience not less grave than the first. The difficulty of procuring proofs would be such that it would be necessary to encourage informers, and to entertain an army of spies. This necessity forms a third inconvenience, greater than either of the others.

“Let us compare the results of good and evil. Offenses of this nature, if that name can be properly given to imprudences, produces no alarm; but the pretended remedy would spread a universal terror. Innocent or guilty, everyone would fear for himself or his connections; suspicions and accusations would render society dangerous; we should fly from it, we should involve ourselves in mystery and concealment, we should shun all the disclosures of confidence. Instead of suppressing one vice, the laws would produce other vices, new and more dangerous.”

- Jeremy Bentham, English (1748-1832)