THE WHIPPING-POST. 831 



an example. The infliction of such penalties proceeds upon the theory 

 of retaliation, and, for this reason, is improper and vicious. The legiti- 

 mate province of all laws relating to penalties for crime is punishment 

 simply. Anything that is inflicted beyond this, whether against law, 

 as by mob violence, or by legislation, as in the case of retaliatory pun- 

 ishments, exceeds the legitimate scope of penalties for crime. There 

 may be scriptural precedent to the contrary, but we must not adopt as 

 a divine precedent, applicable to all nations, those rules which were 

 laid down for a particular people, in a remote and barbarous age. 

 Many things that are faithless, treacherous, unnatural and cruel, find 

 a seeming sanction and precedent in the Mosaic law. Punishment, in 

 its proper acceptation, means the protection of society, as represented 

 by the State, against the inroads of the individual upon its welfare, 

 or, as it is called in criminal-law phrase, " the peace of the State." It 

 is only when the encroachments of the individual upon the rights of 

 others amount to a public wrong that they are punishable criminally, 

 and then it is only the wrong to society, and not the sin, that is cogniz- 

 able by the tribunals. 



Looking, then, at punishment in that light — viewing it as designed 

 merely to conserve the public welfare, "the peace, government, and 

 dignity of the State," as it is technically expressed in every formal 

 indictment for crime in Maryland — by what consideration should we 

 be guided in determining the true policy to be pursued in the applica- 

 tion of punishments ? Surely, not the narrow one of (at all hazards) 

 suppressing the particular crime. Crime can not be stamped out by 

 any heroic methods of treatment. Sin and crime are inevitable condi- 

 tions incident to our present state of social advancement, just as dis- 

 ease is a factor of our physical being. He would be deemed an un- 

 skillful physician who directed all his efforts toward the driving away 

 of a particular malady without regard to the effect of his course of 

 treatment upon the general system of the patient. A like want of 

 skill in statesmanship is exhibited when the legislator proposes such a 

 remedy as that enacted in Maryland for wife-beating, to wit, the 

 whipping-post, without weighing the effect of the introduction of that 

 sort of remedy upon the constitution of the body politic. 



The arguments advanced in support of this legislation are as plausi- 

 ble and as apt to impress the popular mind as they are fallacious and 

 illogical. The crime of the brutal wife-beater affords an excellent 

 topic for declamation and invective, and people of generous, high im- 

 pulse are very prone to yield their cooler judgment in such matters to 

 specious rhetoric. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the question 

 from a logical stand-point, free from all declamation or sentimental- 

 ism, in which the discussions of such questions too frequently abound. 



Xow, firstly, let it be borne in mind that, in the discussion of a 

 question of punishment for crime, we deal with public interests. Mere 

 satisfaction to the individual upon whom the crime is perpetrated is 



