To deprive an offender of his life in any manner will appear to be unjust, as it seems always sufficiently practicable, without this, to prevent him from further offence. Privation of life, though by no means the greatest injury that can be inflicted, must always be considered as a very serious injury; since it puts a perpetual close upon the prospects of the sufferer as to all the enjoyments, the virtues and the excellence of a human being.
In the story of those whom the merciless laws of Europe doom to destruction, we sometimes meet with persons who, subsequently to their offence, have succeeded to a plentiful inheritance, or who for some other reason appear to have had the fairest prospects of tranquillity and happiness opened upon them. Their story, with a little accommodation, may be considered as the story of every offender. If there be any man whom it may be necessary, for the safety of the whole, to put under restraint, this circumstance is a powerful plea to the humanity and justice of those who conduct the affairs of the community, in his behalf. This is the man who most stands in need of their assistance. If they treated him with kindness, instead of supercilious and unfeeling neglect, if they made him understand with how much reluctance they had been induced to employ the force of the society against him, if they represented the true state of the case with calmness, perspicuity and benevolence to his mind, if they employed those precautions which an humane disposition would not fail to suggest, to keep from him the motives of corruption and obstinacy, his reformation would be almost infallible. These are the prospects to which his wants and his misfortunes powerfully entitle him; and it is from these prospects that the hand of the executioner cuts him off for ever.
It is a mistake to suppose that this treatment of criminals tends to multiply crimes. On the contrary, few men would enter upon a course of violence with the certainty of being obliged, by a slow and patient process, to amputate their errors. It is the uncertainty of punishment under the existing forms that multiplies crimes. Remove this uncertainty, and it would be as reasonable to expect that a man would wilfully break his leg, for the sake of being cured by a skilful surgeon. Whatever gentleness the intellectual physician may display, it is not to be believed that men can part with rooted habits of injustice and vice without considerable pain.
The true reasons in consequence of which these forlorn and deserted members of the community are brought to an ignominious death are, first, the peculiar iniquity of the civil institutions of that community, and, secondly, the supineness and apathy of their superiors. In republican and simple forms of government, punishments are rare, and the punishment of death almost unknown. On the other hand, the more there is in any country of inequality and oppression, the more punishments are multiplied. The more the institutions of society contradict the genuine sentiments of the human mind, the more severely is it necessary to avenge their violation.
At the same time the rich and titled members of the community, proud of their fancied eminence, behold, with total unconcern, the destruction of the destitute and the wretched, disdaining to recollect that, if there be any intrinsic difference between them, it is the offspring of their different circumstances, and that the man whom they now so much despise might have been found as accomplished and susceptible as they if he had only changed situations. When we behold a company of poor wretches brought out for execution, reflection will present to our affrighted fancy all the hopes and possibilities which are thus brutally extinguished, the genius, the daring invention, the unshrinking firmness, the tender charities and ardent benevolence, which have occasionally, under this system, been sacrificed, at the shrine of torpid luxury and unrelenting avarice.
The species of suffering commonly known by the appellation of corporal punishment is also proscribed by the system above established. Corporal punishment, unless so far as it is intended for example, appears, in one respect, in a very ludicrous point of view . It is an expeditious mode of proceeding which has been invented in order to compress the effect of much reasoning and long confinement, that might otherwise have been necessary, into a very short compass. In another view, it is difficult to express the abhorrence it ought to create. The genuine propensity of man is to venerate mind in his fellow man. With what delight do we contemplate the progress of intellect, its efforts for the discovery of truth, the harvest of virtue that springs up under the genial influence of instruction, the wisdom that is generated through the medium of unrestricted communication?
How completely do violence and corporal infliction reverse the scene? From this moment, all the wholesome avenues of mind are closed, and, on every side, we see them guarded with a train of disgraceful passions, hatred, revenge, despotism, cruelty, hypocrisy, conspiracy and cowardice. Man becomes the enemy of man; and stronger are seized with the lust of unbridled domination, and the weaker shrink, with hopeless disgust, from the approach of a fellow.