240 Proceedingti of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



Piofessor Laurie coDsidered there were some points in 

 the paper which must inevitably give rise to difi'erence of 

 opinion, and he was rather sorry it had raised the question 

 of free-will. Discarding free-will, and holding any doctrine 

 that might be preferred, it was not necessary to go to the 

 opposite extreme and to say that every person who fell 

 into crime was to be regarded, not as an object of blame, but 

 solely of pity. The fact was, that persons who did wrong 

 frequently blamed themselves, and admitted that they 

 deserved punishment. That showed that they could not 

 wholly do away with the sense of blame for wrong done. 

 Mr. Sutherland's great point should not be lost sight of 

 namely, that the aim of government in inflicting punish- 

 ment was to deter crime. The aim of government should be 

 to suppress crime, and it was justified in doing all it could 

 to attain that object. Punishment, or the tear of punish- 

 ment, was a great factor in suppressing crime— in preventing 

 a person who contemplated committing crime from falling 

 into it. At least, that should be the aim of punishment. 

 He was entirely in accord with Mr. Sutherland, that govern- 

 ment was entitled to say how it was best to inflict punish- 

 ment, but at the same time he did not see any reason why 

 the moral aspect of crime, even from the deterrent view, 

 should be omitted. It was quite true that people were 

 swayed by fear of punishment, but when the State laid 

 down certain rules, the violation of which would lead to 

 punishment, it did not hold out a threat to deter people 

 from doing what they would otherwise like to do. To 

 many people, the State was an embodied conscience. 

 People did not come into the world knowing what was 

 right or wrong, nor did they evolve propositions as to right 

 or wrong from their peisonality ; they were taught by 

 others, and in a great measure by the laws of the State, as 

 to what was right or wrong. A great many peo]jle regarded 

 the laws which the State had laid down with regard to 

 crime as laws which, from a moral point of view, should not 

 be transgressed, so that the deterrent powei' of the State 

 appeared to him to act, not only from the fear of punish- 

 ment, but also because of a moral standard which the 

 majority of people adopted, and which they were not likely 

 to transgress. It should be borne in mind, that the punish- 

 ment inflicted by the State for crime, so far from reforming 

 the criminal, had the opposite eflect, and it was a question 

 worthv of consideration whether the State should not adopt 



