544 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 



It is not the terrible, yet brief, siylit of a criminal's death, but 

 the long and painful example of a man deprived of his liberty, 

 who, having become as it were a beast of burthen, repays Avith his 

 toil the society he has offended, which is the strongest restraint 

 from crimes. P^ar more potent than the fear of death, which men 

 ever have before their eyes in the remote distance, is the thought, 

 so efficacious from its constant recurrence, "I myself shall be 

 reduced to as long and miserable a condition if I commit similar 

 misdeeds." The intensity of punishment of penal servitude for 

 life, substituted for capital punishment, has that in it which is 

 sufficient to daunt the most determined courage. To me it seems 

 an absurdity thai the laws which are the expression of the public 

 will, which abhor and which punish murder, should themselves 

 commit one, and that to deter citizens from private assassination 

 they should themselves order a public murder. 



Although this was written nearly 150 years ago, at a time when 

 the rack and other horrible instruments of torture were employed 

 in the administration of justice, and when it was highl)^ dangerous 

 to express such opinions, it will be difficult to find the arguments 

 in favor of the view he supports put more forcibly or succinctly, 

 however erroneous one may think them. Is is, however, a fallacy to 

 call a State execution of one convicted of homicide a murder. 

 The same authority that gave the command, " Thou shalt do no 

 murder" also said, "Whoso killeth any person, the murderer 

 shall be put to death by the mouth of witnesses, but one witness 

 shall not testify against any person to cause him to die. More- 

 over, ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which 

 is guilty of death ; but he shall be surely put to death." The 

 assassin is disobeying the law of God and man when he murders a 

 fellow-creature. The State is obeying the express command of 

 the Divine Lawgiver and its own laws when it exacts the murderer's 

 life as the penalty. But time will not permit of further dissecting 

 the argument. 



Although nearly all Beccaria's writings tended towards the 

 merciful treatment of offenders it is curious to note that he, in 

 common with Montesquieu and Bentham, advocated analogy be- 

 tween crime and its punishment ; but, as pointed out by other 

 writers, the principle has in its favor the authority of Moses, the 

 authority of the whole world, and of all time, that punishment 

 shoidd, if possible, resemble in kind the crime it punishes : so 

 that a man who blinds another should be himself blinded, he that 

 disfigures another be himself disfigured. Thus in the old-world 

 mythology Theseus and Hercules inflict on the evil powers they 

 conquer the same cruelties for which their victims were famous. 

 Bentham was less pronounced in its favor than Beccaiia and 

 Montesquieu; nevertheless he recommended burning for arson, and 

 the transfixing of a forger's hand or a slanderer's tongue by an iron 

 instrument as punishments for the respective crimes mentioned. 



