74 



chances of being punished at all. The educated nian might 

 deliberately weigh the gratification of revenge, against a life 

 spent in solitary confinement and hard labour, and elect the 

 former. Were he certain of suffering the same as his victim, 

 he would more certainly curb his fury. 



In the former case there would always be the hope that 

 some one of the many chapters of accidents might release him 

 — as the interest of friends, the lawyer's pleadings, an ouii 

 burst of popular feeling, the conflagration of the prison, or 

 a well-planned escape. In the latter, there would be no hope, 

 — nothing to look forward to after conviction but an igno- 

 minious death. 



There was no doubt, when we considered the number of 

 mysterious murders and secret poisonings which occurred 

 annually, that they were perpetrated by persons of an edu- 

 cated mind, who were capable of reasoning, and, most proba- 

 bly, did thus reason. 



He thought there was ground for fear that the number of 

 these crimes would be increased, were the penalty attending 

 them diminished. There was always a certain number of impul- 

 sive murders which might probably be uninfluenced by the 

 punishment inflicted. These were cases in which merciful- 

 minded juries practically showed a sense of their criminal in- 

 feriority to premeditated guilt, by giving verdicts of man- 

 slaughter. It was to premeditated murder that death was 

 most uniformly attached. 



But it might be said that statistics had fully proved that — 

 crime increased, decreased, or remained stationary, in direct 

 proportion to the certainty with which it was discovered and 

 punished ; and the amount of practical publicity given to the 

 account of the offence, to its detection and its consequences. 

 He referred to tables, showing that those counties which were 

 best off' as regards police and education, were precisely those 

 in which no relative increase of crime had taken place during 

 the last twenty years. 



