ABSTRACT
Theft that is not accompanied by violence should receive a monetary punishment. He who lines his own pockets at the expense of others must be made poor. But this is usually a crime of misery and desperation, a crime of this unhappy part of men to whom the right of property has left them a meager existence. A more appropriate punishment for this crime would be the only kind of servitude that can be considered just, that is the temporary enslavement to society of the labor and the person of the offender, a repayment with a true and perfect dependence on the unjust despotism with which the offender has usurped the social contract. But when the theft is committed with violence, the punishment must also include corporal punishment and servitude. These are crimes of a different nature, and the mathematical axiom which states that infinity separates heterogeneous quantities can most certainly be applied even in politics.
