force may be employed either to punish or to prevent. That seems blameable which falls short of that ordinary degree of proper be|neficence which experience teaches us to expect of every body; and on the contrary, that seems praise-worthy which goes beyond it. The ordinary degree itself seems neither blameable nor praise-worthy. A father, a son, a brother, who behaves to the corres|pondent relation neither better nor worse than the greater part of men commonly do, seems properly to deserve neither praise nor blame. He who surprises us by ex|traordinary and unexpected, though still proper, and suitable kindness, or on the contrary, by extraordinary and unexpected, as well as unsuitable unkindness, seems praise-worthy in the one case, and blame|able in the other.
Even the most ordinary degree of kind|ness or beneficence, however, cannot, among equals, be extorted by force. Among equals each individual is naturally, and an|tecedent to the institution of civil govern|ment, regarded as having a right both to defend himself from injuries, and to exact a certain degree of punishment for those which have been done to him. Every ge|nerous
