Little good can be expected from any species of anarchy that should subsist, for instance, among American savages. In order to anarchy being rendered a seed-plot of future justice, reflection and enquiry must have gone before, the regions of philosophy must have been penetrated, and political truth have opened her school to mankind. It is for this reason that the revolutions of the present age (for revolution is a species of anarchy)Chapter romise a more auspicious ultimate result than the revolutions of any former period. For the same reason, the more anarchy can be held at bay, the more fortunate will it be for mankind. Falsehood may gain by precipitating the crisis; but a genuine and enlightened philanthropy will wait, with unaltered patience, for the harvest of instruction. The arrival of that harvest may be slow, but it is perhaps infallible. If vigilance and wisdom be successful in their present opposition to anarchy, every benefit may ultimately be expected, untarnished with violence, and unstained with blood.
These observations are calculated to lead us to an accurate estimate of the mischiefs of anarchy, and, of consequence, to show the importance we are bound to attach to the exclusion of it. Government is frequently a source of peculiar evils; but an enlarged view will teach us to endure those evils which experience seems to evince are inseparable from the final benefit of mankind. From the savage state to the highest degree of civilization, the passage is long and arduous; and, if we aspire to the final result, we must submit to that portion of misery and vice which necessarily fills the space between. If we would free ourselves from these inconveniences, unless our attempt be both skilful and cautious, we shall be in danger, by our impatience, of producing worse evils than those we would escape.
Now it is the first principle of morality and justice that directs us, where one of two evils is inevitable, to choose the least. Of consequence, the wise and just man, being unable, as yet, to introduce the form of society which his understanding approves, will contribute to the support of so much coercion as is necessary to exclude what is worse, anarchy.
If then constraint as the antagonist of constraint must in certain cases, and under temporary circumstances, be admitted, it is an interesting enquiry to ascertain which of the three ends of punishment, already enumerated, must be selected by the individuals by whom punishment is employed. And here it will be sufficient very briefly to recollect the reasonings that have been stated under each of these heads. It cannot be reformation. Reformation is improvement; and nothing can take place in a man worthy the name of improvement otherwise than by an appeal to the unbiassed judgement of his mind, and the essential feelings of his nature. If I would improve a man's character, who is there that knows not that the only effectual mode is by removing all extrinsic influences and incitements, by inducing him to observe, to reason and enquire, by leading him to the forming a series of sentiments that are truly his own, and not slavishly modelled upon the sentiments of another?
To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian; civilization and science are calculated to explode so ferocious an idea.It was once universally admitted and approved;Chapter t is now necessarily upon the decline.
Punishment must either ultimately succeed in imposing the sentiments it is employed to inculcate upon the mind of the sufferer; or it must forcibly alienate him against them.
The last of these can never be the intention of its employer, or have a tendency to justify its application. If it were so, punishment ought to follow upon deviations from vice, not deviations from virtue. Yet to alienate the mind of the sufferer from the individual that punishes, and from the sentiments he entertains, is perhaps the most common effect of punishment.
Let us suppose however that its effect is of an opposite nature; that it produces obedience, and even a change of opinion. What sort of a being does it leave the man thus reformed? His opinions are not changed upon evidence. His conversion is the result of fear. Servility has operated that within him which liberal enquiry and instruction were not able to do.
Punishment undoubtedly may change a man's behaviour. It may render his external conduct beneficial from injurious, though it is no very promising expedient for that purpose. But it cannot improve his sentiments, or lead him to the form of right proceeding but by the basest and most despicable motives. It leaves him a slave, devoted to an exclusive self-interest, and actuated by fear, the meanest of the selfish passions.