EDITOR'S TABLE. 



555 



author, nor did he know when it was to ap- 

 pear. The work of Mr. CroU on " Climate 

 and Time " was published in London about 

 six months later, or in the spring of 1875 ; 

 and Mr. Merriman's articles, from which Mr. 



Norton is accused of borrowing, first ap- 

 peared in " The Popular Science Monthly " 

 for April and June, 1876, nearly a year and 

 a half after the receipt of Mr. Norton's pa- 

 per. — Editors. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



VENOEAKCE /A" PUNISHMENT. 



THOSE dainty purists who " do not 

 like the word Sociology,'''' and are 

 therefore hindered from taking interest 

 in the science that passes under the 

 name, may get a glimpse of one of its 

 problems in unobjectionable form by 

 reading the able paper of a practical law- 

 yer which opens the present " Monthly." 

 Of all the questions by which modern 

 society is agitated, there is none more 

 momentous than that of the public 

 treatment of crime and criminals. No 

 man can be found' so stupid as to main- 

 tain that the present practice is satis- 

 factory ; and but few have the wisdom 

 to indicate anything that is really much 

 better. In this state of affairs the first 

 thing required is to understand how 

 present conditions were reached ; and 

 what is the nature of those changes 

 that have brought past amelioration, 

 and may lead on to a still better state. 

 Only when the laws of social progress 

 are discovered and made widely known 

 can they be conformed to by communi- 

 ties with solid and lasting advantage. 



We have a system of penal laws for 

 the protection of individual rights and 

 the conservation of society by punish- 

 ing prescribed offenses ; and the gen- 

 eral notion is, that this system is coeval 

 with government, and was originally in- 

 stituted essentially in its present form 

 and for its present purpose. This, how- 

 ever, is a great mistake, as is instruc- 

 tively shown by Mr. Billson. He points 

 out that the first rude governments have 

 only a concern for themselves. Govern- 

 ment arose in tribal antagonisms, was a 

 militant organization against external 



foes, and recognized no crimes except 

 such as treason, cowardice, desertion, or 

 such acts as injured itself. There was, at 

 first, not the slightest idea of protecting 

 citizens against crime by punishing pri- 

 vate offenses. Individuals were left to 

 redress their own grievances. Murder, 

 for example, was a private wrong, to be 

 privately avenged by a relative of the 

 victim, who was at liberty to kill the 

 murderer. Government had no inter- 

 nal police or judicial processes, and the 

 rule of punishment was that of private 

 personal vengeance. Society, as a con- 

 sequence, was torn by internal feuds 

 and bloody violence, and was ruled by 

 the spirit of retaliation and revenge. 

 Mr. Billson shows us the extent and 

 atrocity and tenacity of this system, 

 and how criminal law arose out of the 

 necessity of regulating the excesses of 

 malignant blood-avengement. 



This chapter in the criminal history 

 of society has a grave significance as 

 interpreting tlie spirit by which crime 

 is still treated. For, although civilized 

 society has made great advances in 

 framing penal codes on principles of 

 justice, and although government has 

 abolished private retaliation, and itself 

 assumes the prerogative of punishing 

 crime, it has not outgrown the vin- 

 dictive passions of the barbarous past. 

 The practice of dueling, a vestige of 

 the old private avengement of wrong, 

 is not extinct; and in the prison-treat- 

 ment and public execution of criminals 

 we still see survivals of the old savage 

 feeling of vengeance that has not yet 

 died out of the community. By the 

 abolition of torture we have conceded 



