832 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



not to be considered, nor is the matter of tbe welfare of the offender 

 to control our action in dealing with crime. Both interests must yield 

 to that of the State, which is the injured party. The errors most fre- 

 quently committed in forming a judgment as to the punishment due 

 for any crime arise, on the one hand, from an excess of hostile feeling 

 toward the offender, which obscures our view of the real end to be ac- 

 complished by his punishment, and, on the other hand, the opposite 

 bent of letting sympathy and excess of kindly feeling shut out from 

 our view the demands of public justice. 



In traveling through the dark mazes of human frailty and crime, 

 it would be difficult to find an object more seemingly devoid of every 

 nobler human instinct than the cruel wife-beater, for whose offense a 

 recent Maryland statute has revived the lash and whipping-post ; unless, 

 indeed, it be that loathsome specimen from the list of criminals, in 

 whom humanity seems to have sunk to its lowest ebb, the cruel child- 

 beater. But, let us proceed to answer the real question which the 

 punishment of the wife-beater raises for solution. Does society, whose 

 laws have been broken and must be vindicated, upon the whole, gain 

 or does it lose by the method of punishment under discussion ? 

 Granted that the whipping-post will stamp out the crime of wife- 

 beating in our midst, does the gain justify the price ? 



To illustrate my meaning clearly, I lay down the following propo- 

 sition, which will not be gainsaid by any one versed in matters of 

 social science. If, in the case of any given offense, no punishment to 

 be meted out to the offender could be devised that would be effective 

 in deterring others from committing the like offense, then the State 

 could not rightfully punish at all, however heinous the offense. Why ? 

 Because, in the language of an eminent and conservative writer upon 

 this subject, " the end of punishment is not by way of atonement or 

 expiation of the crime committed, for that must be left to the just de- 

 termination of a Supreme Being, but as a precaution against future 

 offenses." Unless the punishment can be made effective for the con- 

 servation of the peace of the State, we are not justified in infiicting 

 it. From this the further proposition follows, that the State may in- 

 flict no further or greater punishment than is absolutely necessary to 

 attain that end, the protection of society. Do these interests require 

 and are they advanced by the infliction of lashes upon wife-beaters ? 



It may safely be stated that a husband, before he beats his wife to 

 the brutal extent that is contemplated by the statute authorizing 

 lashes, has ah-eady sufficiently shown his evil character to warn his 

 wife that he is no tit husband for her to dwell with and enable her to 

 procure the separation to which the law entitles her. If this were 

 done, all occasion for any such crime would be avoided, and the wife 

 would be protected, and society protected. But, must a wife, simply 

 because her husband is a brute, seek a divorce, and thus lose home 

 and husband, and, moreover, deprive her children of their home and 



