say that if you do not punish for the sake
of punishment at In point of fact, we believe that the educational effect of all, but only detain a criminal in confinement as little our penal laws on the mind of the people is far more really different from that of his ordinary mode of life as possible, important than the so-called deterrent effect. We mean by you would not diminish the deterrent effect of the penalty ? the deterrent effect, the effect which deliberate calculation of Mr. Bright would certainly not go as far as that. But the legal consequences of crime produces on the minds of in- if not, how far would he go? He would hardly deny, for tending criminals. Now, strange as it may seem, it is never- instance, that careful graduation of the degrees of punishment to theless, we believe, quite true, that this effect of penal law is the degrees of crime is important for deterrent purposes. If he greatest where the guilt and crime themselves are least, and would, why punish a thoroughly malignant murderer more least where they are greatest. The penal consequences of severely than a completely accidental murderer,—which it was maliciously destroying your neighbour's property or libelling quite clear that he did desire to do But if Mr. Bright would not your neighbour's credit as a man of business, are usually very care- make light of the importance of proportionating degrees of fully considered, and produce, doubtless, an enormous deterrent punishment to degrees of crime, then surely any change of effect. Were we to reduce greatly the damages obtainable the law which at one step vastly diminished the range of for such malicious injuries and libels, we should, we believe, the whole scale of penalty, is in itself, so far as that goes at all increase greatly for the time the number of this species events, extremely undesirable. Once let us do away with of offences. But once get out of the atmosphere of calcnla- our highest expression of national horror for the worst crime, tion into the region of the more deadly passions, and it is, and the relative effect of the varying feeling of society towards doubtless, true that the immediately deterrent effect of the lesser crime loses materially in significance. Diminish vastly penal law on the mind of the criminal, is seldom of much the intensity with which society expresses its abhorrence of account. But while this is so true that it might very well a cruel and treacherous murder, and you throw away one be also true that if penal servitude for life were substituted for of the most vivid and impressive lessons which law reads capital punishment, no bad result would be perceived for to the imagination of the rude and unlettered class at the years in the shape of increase in the number of murders, we base of our social system. Mr. Bright argues that because do strongly hold that the effect of the change would be it did not increase, but rather diminished the amount of ultimately very mischievous, because the educational in- crime, when we abolished the penalty of death for sheep- fluence of our criminal law on the imagination of the stealing, shop-lifting, and so forth, therefore you will not people would be seriously injured. So long as the ex- increase, but rather diminish the amount of murder, if you treme penalty is reserved only for the most horrible abolish the penalty of death for murder. Well, but if crimes,—and of course we quite agree that any change in the that argument is really sound, it asserts that because the law which would be needful to produce this result would be - reduction of an extravagant penalty to one that is better most desirable,—the use of an extreme and unique penalty -proportioned to the guilt, works well, therefore the reduction that does not shade off into other penalties,—one impressive to. of a penalty that is not extravagant and that is already fairly the imagination and the conscience, and which naturally proportioned to the guilt, will work just as well. Now, surely associates itself with crimes of the class for which it is natural it would be hard to find a proposition with less appearance of to feel loathing as well as displeasure,—is of the highest truth in it. There are many very good reasons why the reduc- possible advantage, if only as branding the more diabolical tion of extravagant penalties, not warranted by the conscience offences with a special stamp of social abhorrence. What and reason of society, works well. In the first place, it tends child does not feel the difference between the expressive signi- to enlist the conscience of the criminal class, such as it is, on flcance of capital punishment and that of those various terms of the side of the law, and no law works well at all which is not imprisonment with hard labour which pass by such fine de- in some degree echoed in the conscience of the criminal class. grees into each other that, except by the criminals who have In the next place, it gives expression to, and therefore tends to bear them, they are very little discriminated in the minds of a to increase, the human fellow-feeling between the law-abiding careless public? To some extent crimes whose penalty is death and the law-breaking class, and to narrow the chasm be- are already regarded with this mysterious horror, and if our law. tween them. That of course must always work well. Any were amended, as it ought to be, and as a Royal COMMisth0/1 complete and absolute alienation between the dangerous classes have proposed that it should be, this would be still more. and the respectable classes, breeds apathy and despair in the accurately true. Doubtless the proper moral effect of former, and nothing fosters crime like apathy or despair. But capital punishment was wholly lost at the time when all it does not in the least follow that because changes of sorts of slight offences to which starving wretches were the law which mark a truer sense of relative guilt, give impelled by the mere intensity of their hunger, or their to the sentences of the law a higher moral weight and compassion for the hunger of their children, were pun- influence, therefore changes in the law which greatly subtract ished capitally, and even now capital punishment is, to from our means of adequately expressing our sense of relative some extent, demoralised when a man who kills a woman acci- guilt, will have the same effect. Indeed it is most unlikely dentally by passionately throwing a broomstick at her is found the political nightmare dreams, which Lord de Manley ought that they should have such an effect. Unless Mr. Bright and to be thanked and not ridiculed for putting into such Mr. Pease are prepared to argue that in all cases the abolition intelligible English, that the Minister responsible for of capital punishment must deepen the popular impression of India had at last a fair opportunity for showing how the justice of our penal system, it is idle for them to cite preposterous they are. It is an advantage, not a disadvan- cases in which that has been the case, in order to recommend tage, to the country, that Lord Salisbiny should be provoked this new and very important change. Doubtless it will act in to put before the people as he did at Merchant Taylors the the same way as those former changes, if it produces one unanswerable argument which even the bitterest advo- the same moral effect upon those who are at all in cate for war at any price cannot fail to understand :—" I will danger of falling into crime ; and if not, not. Now not say that we have an enemy, although it is generally sup- is it at all true that the popular impression of the justice posed that this war has been concocted against English of our penal system would be improved by abolishing interests. I believe it may be looked at in another light, but the power to punish the most hideous and frightful crimes assuming that this is so, what is the wiser course,—to allow by a most solemn, graphic, and impressive mark of public in- your enemy to choose his own ground,and to follow him through dignation and horror ? We doubt if any reasonable person his deserts and impassable mountain chains, or to wait until he would venture to say so. What the speakers on Tuesday comes within your own range, and where your armies will be night seemed quite to forget is this,—that a most important
part of the deterrent effect of punishment is that which
does not so much prevent crime itself, amongst those who are tempted to it, as remove entirely the temptation to such crime, MR. BRIGHT ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. by instilling a salutary horror of it into the whole community. - ifOW much better the debate on Capital Punishment would That horror might very well be diminished, and be diminished have been, if the various speakers would but have pur- even considerably for a time without producing any effect sued the logic of their own arguments into the consequences to in increasing the number of such crimes. And yet if the which it really led For instance, Mr. Bright and many recoil of the popular imagination from crime of this class others made their speeches turn on the tested experience of man- were diminished, if the mind of the people were less re- kind,—as they regarded it,—that by diminishing the severity volted by it, one of the most effectual securities against the of the penalty with which a crime is visited, you do not in future increase of such crimes, and against the immediate the least diminish the deterrent effect of that penalty. Now trifling of bolder consciences with such crimes, would how far would they carry that plea ? Surely not so far as to disappear at once. say that if you do not punish for the sake of punishment at In point of fact, we believe that the educational effect of all, but only detain a criminal in confinement as little our penal laws on the mind of the people is far more really different from that of his ordinary mode of life as possible, important than the so-called deterrent effect. We mean by you would not diminish the deterrent effect of the penalty ? the deterrent effect, the effect which deliberate calculation of Mr. Bright would certainly not go as far as that. But the legal consequences of crime produces on the minds of in- if not, how far would he go? He would hardly deny, for tending criminals. Now, strange as it may seem, it is never- instance, that careful graduation of the degrees of punishment to theless, we believe, quite true, that this effect of penal law is the degrees of crime is important for deterrent purposes. If he greatest where the guilt and crime themselves are least, and would, why punish a thoroughly malignant murderer more least where they are greatest. The penal consequences of severely than a completely accidental murderer,—which it was maliciously destroying your neighbour's property or libelling quite clear that he did desire to do But if Mr. Bright would not your neighbour's credit as a man of business, are usually very care- make light of the importance of proportionating degrees of fully considered, and produce, doubtless, an enormous deterrent punishment to degrees of crime, then surely any change of effect. Were we to reduce greatly the damages obtainable the law which at one step vastly diminished the range of for such malicious injuries and libels, we should, we believe, the whole scale of penalty, is in itself, so far as that goes at all increase greatly for the time the number of this species events, extremely undesirable. Once let us do away with of offences. But once get out of the atmosphere of calcnla- our highest expression of national horror for the worst crime, tion into the region of the more deadly passions, and it is, and the relative effect of the varying feeling of society towards doubtless, true that the immediately deterrent effect of the lesser crime loses materially in significance. Diminish vastly penal law on the mind of the criminal, is seldom of much the intensity with which society expresses its abhorrence of account. But while this is so true that it might very well a cruel and treacherous murder, and you throw away one be also true that if penal servitude for life were substituted for of the most vivid and impressive lessons which law reads capital punishment, no bad result would be perceived for to the imagination of the rude and unlettered class at the years in the shape of increase in the number of murders, we base of our social system. Mr. Bright argues that because do strongly hold that the effect of the change would be it did not increase, but rather diminished the amount of ultimately very mischievous, because the educational in- crime, when we abolished the penalty of death for sheep- fluence of our criminal law on the imagination of the stealing, shop-lifting, and so forth, therefore you will not people would be seriously injured. So long as the ex- increase, but rather diminish the amount of murder, if you treme penalty is reserved only for the most horrible abolish the penalty of death for murder. Well, but if crimes,—and of course we quite agree that any change in the that argument is really sound, it asserts that because the law which would be needful to produce this result would be - reduction of an extravagant penalty to one that is better most desirable,—the use of an extreme and unique penalty -proportioned to the guilt, works well, therefore the reduction that does not shade off into other penalties,—one impressive to. of a penalty that is not extravagant and that is already fairly the imagination and the conscience, and which naturally proportioned to the guilt, will work just as well. Now, surely associates itself with crimes of the class for which it is natural it would be hard to find a proposition with less appearance of to feel loathing as well as displeasure,—is of the highest truth in it. There are many very good reasons why the reduc- possible advantage, if only as branding the more diabolical tion of extravagant penalties, not warranted by the conscience offences with a special stamp of social abhorrence. What and reason of society, works well. In the first place, it tends child does not feel the difference between the expressive signi- to enlist the conscience of the criminal class, such as it is, on flcance of capital punishment and that of those various terms of the side of the law, and no law works well at all which is not imprisonment with hard labour which pass by such fine de- in some degree echoed in the conscience of the criminal class. grees into each other that, except by the criminals who have In the next place, it gives expression to, and therefore tends to bear them, they are very little discriminated in the minds of a to increase, the human fellow-feeling between the law-abiding careless public? To some extent crimes whose penalty is death and the law-breaking class, and to narrow the chasm be- are already regarded with this mysterious horror, and if our law. tween them. That of course must always work well. Any were amended, as it ought to be, and as a Royal COMMisth0/1 complete and absolute alienation between the dangerous classes have proposed that it should be, this would be still more. and the respectable classes, breeds apathy and despair in the accurately true. Doubtless the proper moral effect of former, and nothing fosters crime like apathy or despair. But capital punishment was wholly lost at the time when all it does not in the least follow that because changes of sorts of slight offences to which starving wretches were the law which mark a truer sense of relative guilt, give impelled by the mere intensity of their hunger, or their to the sentences of the law a higher moral weight and compassion for the hunger of their children, were pun- influence, therefore changes in the law which greatly subtract ished capitally, and even now capital punishment is, to from our means of adequately expressing our sense of relative some extent, demoralised when a man who kills a woman acci- guilt, will have the same effect. Indeed it is most unlikely dentally by passionately throwing a broomstick at her is found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, though multitudes of persons a thousand times more guilty live comparatively prosperous lives. Unquestionably, this great sensational penalty should be reserved to mark the highest degree of human abhorrence. But for the purpose of marking that degree we believe it to be beyond comparison the best, the most effective, and the most likely to instil horror into the minds of the respectable and the dangerous classes alike. And this is the highest use of a penal law. Its truest ' deterrent ' effect is exerted, not by calculation on those who are already living in the atmosphere of crime, but on average members of society whom it impresses by its graphic reflection and vivid embodiment of their own moral judgments. It is im- possible that a society which grows up with this separateness of abhorrent feeling towards the higher degrees of crime, should fail to infect deeply with its own dread even those lower strata which live in constant contact with crime, and by thus infecting, to deter from such crime far more effectually than any anticipation of calculated penalty would deter them. This is the great argument, to our mind, for retaining a-very special penalty for very high degrees of guilt ; and yet not a single one of the speakers in favour of the abolition of capital punishment appeared ever to have weighed it, before throwing himself into the crusade. It would take a good deal to convince us that if society voluntarily denies itself the means of vividly expressing the highest degrees of moral abhorrence, the result would not be to diminish in time, and very gravely diminish, the involuntary loathing in which those high degrees of crime are held.
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