A woman's head-dress catches fire: water is at hand: a man, instead of assisting to quench the fire, looks on, and laughs at it. A drunken man, falling with his face downwards into a puddle, is in danger of suffocation: lifting his head a little on one side would save him: another man sees this and lets him lie. A quantity of gunpowder lies scattered about a room: a man is going into it with a lighted candle: another knowing this, lets him go in without warning. Who is there that in any of these cases would think punishment misapplied?
(Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart, in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. F. Rosen and Philip Schofield [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996], chap. 17, sec. 19, note u, p. 293 [book first published in 1789])
Note from KBJ: Who is there? Me!—at least if Bentham is talking about legal punishment. The law has no business coercing people into doing good (which includes, but is not limited to, preventing harm). Its authority is limited to coercing people into not doing harm. See the difference?
