456 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



are written read perhaps not read but, certainly forgotten. "^Romanus and 

 Emilli" is by another " hand" and is not written in blank verse, the author 

 may take our word for it. 



THOUGHTS ON SECONDARY PUNISHMENTS. BY DR. WHATLEY. LONDON. 



1832. 



WE should think as meanly of the head as of the heart of the man who 

 should take exception to the spirit in which this excellent work has been con- 

 ceived, aud is written. We have known, seen it denounced in particular quar- 

 ters, in a manner that leaves our charity in the predicament, of supposing that 

 political animosity and rancour have set apart no room for the cultivation or the 

 encouragement of the more amiable and less exclusive feelings. 



To some men every thing, of whatever nature, that tends or purposes to tend 

 towards the amelioration or happiness of their fellow creatures, become in- 

 stantly, because its end a question. They are for things as they are ; they 

 have gone on so long under the old system innovation is dangerous and the 

 like. Such men are like the traveller in a circle of whom Dr. Wately speaks, 

 and should be left to jog on at their own convenience and leisure, and a plea- 

 sant journey to them. 



We wish our space permitted a fuller attention to this book than we are, un- 

 happily, enabled to bestow ; but we cannot refrain from extracting the following 

 rather long passage, which, we think, propounds the theory of punishments in 

 a philosophical spirit with which we could hope our modern legislators were 

 likewise imbibed. 



We may be allowed thus to premise the remark, that there are three, and 

 only three objects, with a view to which punishments can be inflicted or 

 threatened : 1st, Retribution, or vengeance; a desire to allot a proportionate 

 suffering to each degree of moral guilt, independent of any ulterior considera- 

 tion, and solely with a view to the past ill-desert of the offender. 2dly, What 

 may be called correction ; the prevention of a repetition of offence by the same 

 individual ; whether by his reformation or removal. 3dly, The prevention of the 

 offence, generally, by the terror of a punishment denounced ; whether that ob- 

 ject be attained by the example of a culprit suffering the penalty, or, simply, by 

 the mere threat and apprehension of it. To these appropriate objects may be 

 added another, incidental advantage, not belonging to punishments, as sueh, but 

 common to them with other legislative enactments ; the public benefit, in an 

 economical point of view, which may be, conceivably, derived directly from a 

 punishment j as when criminals are usefully employed on any public work, so 

 as to make in that way some compensation to society for the injury done to it. 

 Such a compensation, however, we should remember, must necessarily be so very 

 inadequate, that this object should always be made completely subordinate to 

 the main end or ends proposed in the denunciation of punishment. 



And what is to be regarded as the great object ? All probably would admit, 

 in the abstract, whatever they may do in practice, that it is the prevention of 

 crime. As for the first of the purposes just enumerated, the infliction of just 

 vengeance on the guilty, it is clearly out of man's province. Setting aside the 

 consideration that the circumstances on which moral guilt depends, the inward 

 motives of the offender, his temptations, and the opportunities he may have had 

 of learning his duty, can never be perfectly known but to the searcher of hearts 

 setting aside this, it does not appear that man, even if the degrees of moral 

 turpitude could be ascertained by him, would have a right to inflict on his fel- 

 low man any punishment whatever, whether heavy or light, of which the ulti- 

 mate object should be the suffering of the offender. Such a procedure, in in- 

 dividuals, is distinctly forbidden by the founder of our religion, as a sinful 

 revenge : and it does not appear how individual combined into a community can 

 impart to that community any right which none of them individually possessed ; 

 can bestow, in short, on themselves what is not theirs to bestow. 



