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public to barbarous and sanguinary sights. Still, their effect on young people is not the same as on grown up men and women; and they may be advantageously inflicted on the former when they ought not to be so on the latter. When they are to be inflicted on young people, they should, as much as possible, be inflicted by their parents or guardians. The parental rule can often with advantage be imitated by the Legislator. Again, I hold, in opposition to Paley, that severity increases crime. In general, laws form men's opinions and habits. Take, for example, Athens and Sparta. Their inhabitants were moulded by the laws of Lycurgus and Solon. Again, take Rome under its ancient Kings, its Republic, and its Emperors. It displays entirely different characteristics in those three different stages of its history. Every crime ought to be punished; but not in such a way as to inspire horror and disgust.

(3.) Every punishment should be equal to all—that is, it should be applicable in the same manner to all men, without distinction of rank or position. The Penal Law ought to recognise no social distinction. This equality does not exclude considerations of age, sex, and social position, which often justly have an influence in the infliction of punishment. There may even be severity towards a class, or person, arising out of excessive culpability. But this severity is not inequality of punishment. Still, from a moral point of view, equality of punishment, as I have stated, is impossible; because sensibility to pain varies indefinitely in individuals; and every man feels differently the privations or sufferings which the law inflicts on him. Nay more, strong fanaticism, political or religious, may enable a man to despise the severest punishments which can be inflicted by man on his brother man. Again, punishments should be real and not illusory, and should attach to the person or property of the offender, and not to that of other people.

(4.) Every punishment ought to tend to the reformation of the offender. If it does not improve him, it is, so far, ineffective. By habits of labour, and professional or industrial instruction, the offender may gain the means of an honest livelihood. Poverty, ignorance, and drunkenness are the three greatest and most prolific sources of crime. When the crimes or offences of a delinquent do not display moral perversity, the Legislator ought not to impose reformatory punishment on an offender against the laws. Such crimes ought to be punished in an exceptional manner; and are so treated in France. Again, so far as punishments are exemplary, they should be so by warning all citizens that they would be punished similarly to the offender for similar offences. For punishments to be exemplary, they must be inflicted in public, or known to be inflicted. Perhaps, the imagination is more effective in teaching, by way of example, than by the spectacle of actual punishment before our eyes. Certainly, the punishment of death in private has not deprived capital punishment of any of its terrors. Simple atrocity is, on the other hand, not effective by way of example.

(5.) Unless a punishment is remissible, or reparable, there is grave danger of injustice. Truth is relative. Humanum est errare. That capital punishment is irremissible is the strongest argument which can be adduced for its abolition. When the vital spark is extinguished, no subsequent proof of innocence is of any avail in this world.

As a general rule, all corporeal, degrading, and irremissible punishments should be abolished as much as possible. All barbarous spectacles degrade and deprave humanity; and capital punishment, if not abolished, should be restricted to the narrowest limits consistent with the ends of Justice and the existence of human society. A public execution is a solemn tragedy, whether performed in public, in presence of an assembled crowd, or in

It is a tragedy

private, in presence of the prison officials. full of pathos, and almost sublime in the grandeur of its object. To take away the life of a human being is a grave and serious responsibility, and ought not to be done without the utmost care to exclude the danger of permanent and irretrievable injustice. True, the Quakers and some great philosophers hold that the punishment of death is unlawful. But what do they mean by unlawful? They must mean morally unlawful. Unlawful properly means contrary to the law of the land; and what is conformable to the law of the land cannot be unlawful. Nay more, neither the Old nor the New Testament, nor any principle of morality or justice lays down a Divine law that the punishment by death is unlawful. Men generally prefer any punishment to death, and consider it a mitigation; and yet penal death is often less painful than natural death. Why is this? Is it because of the fear of the anger of an outraged God and Father? By some criminals death is preferred to all other punishments. At a later stage, I shall again consider the punishment of death in its moral and legal aspects.

The punishments of the moral law are no less certainindeed, are often more certain-than the punishments. attached to the breaches of the law of a community; for the breach of the moral law is followed by inward shame and by the loss of the good-will of our friends, associates, and country, or by the dread of such loss. The application of the moral sanction, in consequence of this dependence of mankind, may rise to a tremendous height. As Bentham writes (Theory of Legislation and Morals, III., c. 2), “This punishment admits of no evasion, it comes upon a man from all quarters. He can see no end to its duration, nor limit to its effects." He adds that, "It makes life a perpetual train of disappointments and rebuffs. It leaves a man joyless and forlorn; and, by drying up the source of every felicity, it embitters the whole course of his life,"

Political punishment must be determinate. Moral punishment is unknown and indefinite in extent and intensity. The moral sanction existed before the establishment of political society, and it is continually modifying the laws of political society. It has always existed, and exists now, and ever will exist, as the engine of its Great Founder, in modifying, changing, and improving every form of human society. throughout the world. Education, the moral sanction, and domestic discipline, are far more powerful in moulding the destinies of the human race than all the punishments which can be inflicted by all the political and legislative kings and rulers of the world. The improvement of the criminal classes is not so much to be found in the old, as in the young and rising generation. But penal laws have to be established to strengthen the human imperfections of the moral sanction. Where there is no sensibility, there can be no shame; and yet the well-behaved must be protected from the shameless. Women are more sensitive to shame than men. From infancy, they have the excellent virtues of modesty and reserve instilled into their minds; and they are not long in discovering that this guardian of their virtue is the source of their power; and that, when it is gone, their power is at an end.

4. The Right of Punishment.-But this question arises: what gives rise to the right to punish? Here I answer, the breaking of law. What law? The Municipal Law. Laws have been divided into Civil and Criminal. Although no distinct and invariable line exists or can be drawn between these, the law itself does make the distinction, which, in truth, is based on the real difference which exists in regard to the mode of enforcing private and public duties; for private duties are enforced by the Civil laws as between individuals and individuals; and the Public laws are enforced by the Criminal laws as between private individuals and the public. Private rights and

obligations may be enforced or neglected as private inclination, affection, or caprice may dictate. But in the interests, and for the protection, of the Body Politic, public rights and obligations ought to be enforced, and never neglected, by the public authorities. The enforcement of these public rights is a branch of the sovereign power, which essentially belongs to every independent sovereign or nation. This basis of sovereignty is sufficient for the Magistrate or Judge, as the ground of his authority, and as his protection for the exercise of his powers.

A deeper question lies underneath this basis. It is this: Whence is the right of punishment derived? By surrender, real or supposed; by the exercise of power, consecrated by use; or by what means? All men have not surrendered the right to the State to inflict punishment on them for their offences. But the power of punishment is exercised over all in every civilised State; and, whether unlawfully acquired or not, is absolutely essential for the existence of sovereignty or independence of the State, and for the enjoyment of Liberty by the subject. Necessity, and not contract, is the primary foundation for the legitimate exercise of this sovereign power. Punishments have their origin and their justification in the laws of a community, and ought never to be exceeded. All persons, from the throne to the cottage, are bound by the laws, and ought to submit to their execution.

5. The Various Kinds of Punishment.-What monstrous, barbarous, and shocking cruelties have been inflicted by virtue of the Criminal laws and practices of former ages, and in almost all countries! What could be more monstrous than to condemn persons to death

on charges of witchcraft? What more barbarous than to torture persons convicted of treason? What more shocking than to torture persons to make statements against themselves and others? For example, how can