Rousseau_contrat-social

Again, every malefactor, by attacking social rights, becomes on forfeit
a rebel and a traitor to his country; by violating its laws be ceases to
be a member of it; he even makes war upon it. In such a case the
preservation of the State is inconsistent with his own, and one or the
other must perish; in putting the guilty to death, we slay not so much
the citizen as an enemy. The trial and the judgment are the proofs that
he has broken the social treaty, and is in consequence no longer a
member of the State. Since, then, he has recognised himself to be such
by living there, he must be removed by exile as a violator of the
compact, or by death as a public enemy; for such an enemy is not a moral
person, but merely a man; and in such a case the right of war is to kill
the vanquished.
But, it will be said, the condemnation of a criminal is a particular
act. I admit it: but such condemnation is not a function of the
Sovereign; it is a right the Sovereign can confer without being able
itself to exert it. All my ideas are consistent, but I cannot expound
them all at once.
We may add that frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or
remissness on the part of the government. There is not a single ill-doer
who could not be turned to some good. The State has no right to put to
death, even for the sake of making an example, any one whom it can leave
alive without danger.
The right of pardoning or exempting the guilty from a penalty imposed by
the law and pronounced by the judge belongs only to the authority which
is superior to both judge and law, i.e., the Sovereign; each its right
in this matter is far from clear, and the cases for exercising it are
extremely rare. In a well-governed State, there are few punishments, not
because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is
when a State is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a guarantee of
impunity. Under the Roman Republic, neither the Senate nor the Consuls
ever attempted to pardon; even the people never did so, though it
sometimes revoked its own decision. Frequent pardons mean that crime
will soon need them no longer, and no one can help seeing whither that
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