were required to discuss the subject in detail. For, hard as those labours may be, are they not every where the lot of poverty? and why should an equal destiny await the criminal, and the poor? Besides, is it to be expected, that these labours will be unrelentingly enforced? Where will you find all the executioners necessary for their superintendence? And if we could even suppose these executioners inaccessible to the impulses of pity, will they be so disinterested, as never to sell relaxations of the enacted toil? In fine, habit reconciles men to every thing. These malefactors, whose wretched existence is to serve as a terrible example to their fellow-citizens, may in time, perhaps, venture to appear gay and happy in the midst of their misfortunes. In a word-will none of them, doomed as they are to a life of slavery, attempt and effect their escape? Should such an event but once occur, it will be sufficient (so easily does hope insinuate itself into the human breast!) to encourage a hundred scoundrels to plunge fearlessly into every species of enormity.

"Death," it is alleged, " is but an affair of a moment. Villains know that it must happen at some time or other; they familiarise themselves with this idea; they gradually become indifferent to it; and to the ignominy of an execution they are insensible, since their whole existence is a tissue of ignominy. They would be far more strikingly awed by the apprehension of a life to be protracted in chains, and dungeons, and continual labour." "An execution is a spectacle, generally speaking, which only leaves upon the multitude who attend it, a very feeble impression. The sufferer is usually regarded as an object, either of pity, or of indignation. The salutary terror, excited by the long punishment of a labouring convict, it has no tendency to produce. The latter is, moreover, a standing lesson; whereas the former passes away, and is forgotten."

Death, I own, "is but an affair of a moment." But it is a most decisive moment. It closes the gates of time, and opens

those of eternity. It is a moment, which makes nature shudder. It is not so easy, as you imagine, for a villain "to familiarise himself with the idea" of a death, which he is constantly deserving; since we see him on his way to the gallows trembling and alarmed, and in very few instances indeed encountering his fate with fortitude. Even if any thing like courage be displayed upon such an occasion, it is but a savage brutality. At all events, the object is less to punish the guilty, than to deter others who may yet be innocent. And where is the man, who will not be more deeply affected by seeing a fellow-creature perish under the hand of justice, than by visiting a jail or a galley, in which the images of sorrow and misery are constantly to be found?

"The sufferer," you say, "is usually regarded as an object, either of pity, or of indignation." In that case, be assured your criminal laws are unjust, inhuman, barbarous, and absurd. They punish the frailty of an instant, as a heavy transgression: they confound, and avenge with the same penalty, the knavish servant and the murderer: they outrage reason, by dooming to death a wretch within the reach of amendment, and whose offence implies only incipient corruption. Do not suppose that capital punishment, in order to curb the passions and produce the intended effect, must necessarily be often inflicted. If crimes deserving death are infrequent, why multiply the penalties designed for their prevention? This very infrequency is the most satisfactory proof of the wisdom of the laws.

There are only two classes of delinquents, who deserve death; the murderer, and the traitor, whethe the object of his treason be the establishment of despotism, or the introduction of a foreign yoke.

I shall only add, that the easiest death is the harshest punishment which a judicious legislator can admit. As father of his country, he will punish, like a father, with reluctance. How

wretched an employment, to be occupied in devising tortures! Far from indulging the rigorous indignation, which guilt naturally excites in the virtuous, he will respect the precious feeling of humanity implanted by nature in our breasts.

sess.

VI.

FILANGIERI.*

No one," it is said, "can surrender what he does not pos But no one has a right to put himself to death: Therefore the state, which is merely the depository of the aggregate of rights surrendered by individuals, can have no right to put any one to death.

Such is the sophism, which has misled so many political writers! And yet how easy would it be to extend this principle to every other species of punishment inflicted for the prevention of crimes! Might it not with equal propriety be contended, that it implies atrocious injustice, to condemn any one to the galleys, to the mines, or to perpetual imprisonment? As no one has a right to put himself to death, no one has a right to do any thing by which his death may be accelerated, that is, to allow himself to be condemned to the mines, the galleys, &c. Nay-it may farther be alleged that, as no one has a right to dispose of his life, so no one has a right to dispose of his character, or of his personal freedom. Consequently, whatever punishment affects either of these is unjust.

Every body admits, that society ought to have the right of dooming to death the man who has murdered one of his fellow

* III. ii. 5

creatures. Upon what is this right established? Here begins the uncertainty. The truth, which we are seeking, is too near us: let us remove it to a distance, and it will easily be perceived.

Man, in his original state of independence, has a right to life. This right he can never resign. But can he lose it? Can he be deprived of it without resignation? Is there any imaginable case, in which another may put him to death, without having received authority to do so from himself?

in

In my original state of independence, have I a right to kill another man in self-defence? Every one allows, I have. If I have a right to kill him, he has lost his right to life: for it would imply a contradiction, to suppose the co-existence of opposite rights. There are then in this state of independence certain cases, which a man may lose his right to life, and another man may acquire the right to kill him, without any compact between the parties. It may be asked, whether this principle be not exclusively applicable to the case of self-defence? If the assailant succeed in his murderous design, is the right, which is confessedly acquired by the person assaulted, extinguished by his death; or may it be exercised by the rest of mankind, who are the common depositaries and avengers of natural laws? Is it to be imagined that he, who lost his right to life before he had perpetrated his crime, should recover it by completing the perpetration? Can two effects, so diametrically opposite, spring from the same cause, with the simple distinction of before and after?

To this question I reply, upon the authority of the greatest philosopher in Europe. "Natural laws (says Locke) as well as all other laws respecting man, would be wholly useless, if no one in a state of nature had a right to carry them into execution, and to punish transgressors, whether we have regard to the individual

or to the species, whose preservation is the object of laws com→ mon to the whole of mankind. But, if the right to punish transgressors exists in a state of nature, it is obviously possessed by every one over all others, since all are naturally equal:"-in other words, since what one man is authorised to do by the law of nature, all men are authorised to do by the same law.

To this reasoning of Locke I will just add a single reflexion, Nature has produced nothing without an object. Now what is the object of the aversion excited in our minds against a criminal, who has violated no rights of ours, of our relations, or of our friends? Which of us is not terrified to perceive a crime pass unpunished? Which of us does not rejoice, when justice overtakes the guilty? Which of us, on being told of a flagitious transaction, would not compel the perpetrator to expiate the injury he has done to some wretched person, though an entire stranger to us? Are we, in these instances, under the influence of any selfish motive?

If nature had restricted to the injured the right of killing the injurer, why should she have implanted in our souls so strong a feeling of aversion against the latter? Would not self-love, in that case, have sufficed to answer the end she had in view? Why should she impose upon man so many duties, and not authorise him to guard against the violation of them? Why bestow upon him so many rights, and yet withhold from him that, which can alone secure respect to all the rest?

Without this right, the law of nature would be an absurdity. If the state of nature had so many imperfections, it was not because men were unprivileged to punish; but because they were unable to do in many cases, from a want of the necessary

So,

power.