841 



PUNISHMENT. 



PURITANS. 



843 



and Michaelis, ' Commentaries on the Laws of Moses,' vol. iii , art. 

 240-2.) 



The infliction of pain for the purpose of exacting a satisfaction for 

 an offence committed is vengeance, and punishment inflicted for this 

 purpose is liitftirlii-e. 



By degrees it was perceived that the infliction of pain for a vindictive 

 purpose is not consistent with justice and utility, or with the spirit of 

 the Christian ethics ; and that the proper end of punishment is not to 

 avenge past, but to prevent future offences. (Blackstone's ' Commen- 

 taries,' vol. iv.) 



This end can only be attained by inflicting pain on persons who 

 have committed the offences; and as this effect is also produced by 

 vindictive punishment, vindictive punishment incidentally tends to 

 deter from the commission of offences. Hence Lord Bacon justly calls 

 revenge a sort of wild justice. 



But inasmuch as the proper end of punishment is to deter from the 

 commission of offences, punishment inflicted on the vindictive principle 

 often fails to produce the desired purpose, and moreover often involves 

 the infliction of an unnecessary amount of pain. Again, the degree of 

 the punishment will often be placed too high, if regard is had merely 

 to the suffering produced by the offence in the individual case, or to 

 the moral turpitude implied by it, and not to the facility or difficulty 

 of prevention, or the mischievousness of the class of offences. All 

 punishment is an evil, though a necessary one. The pain produced by 

 the offence is one evil; the pain produced by the punishment is an 

 aildition;il evil ; though the latter is necessary, in order to prevent the 

 recurrence of the offence. Consequently a penal system ought to aim 

 at economising pain, by diffusing the largest amount of salutary terror, 

 and thereby deterring as much as possible from crimes, at the smallest 

 expense of punis-hmeuts actually inflicted ; or (as the idea is concisely 

 expressed by Cicero), " ut inetus ad omnes, poena ad paucos, perveniret." 

 (' Pro Cluentio,' c. (;.) 



It follows from what has been said, that it is essential to a punish- 

 ment to be painful. Accordingly, all the known punishment 

 involved the infliction of pain by different means, as death, mutilation 

 of the body, flogging or beating, privation of bodily liberty by confine- 

 <>f various sorts, banishment, forced labour, privation of civil 

 rights, pecuniary fine. The punishment of death is called capital, 

 punishment : other punishments are sometimes known by the name 

 of tccondary punishments. Moreover, the pain ought to I* sufficiently 

 great to deter persons from committing the offence, and not greater 

 than is necessary for this purpose. 



A punishment ought further to be, as far as the necessary defects of 

 police and judicial procedure will permit, certain; and also, as far 

 as the differences of human natures and circumstances will permit, 



If a punishment be painful, and the pain be of the proper amount, 

 and if it be likewise tolerably equal and certain, it will be good 

 punishment. 



The qualities just enumerated are those which it is most important 

 that * punishment should possess. But it is sometimes thought 

 desirable that a punishment should possess other qualities than those 

 which we have enumerated. 



1. Since the time when it has been generally understood th.it 

 punishment ought not to be inflicted on a vindictive principle, the 

 deterring principle of punishment (which necessarily involves an in- 

 fliction of pain) has been sometimes overlooked, and it has been 

 thought that the end of punishment is the reformation of the person 

 punished. This view of the nature of punishment is erroneous in 

 excluding the exemplary character of punishment, and thus limiting 

 its effects to the persons who have committed the offence, instead of 

 comprehending the much larger number of persons who may commit 

 it. The reformation of convicts who are suffering their punishment 

 is an object which ought to enter into a good penal system ; but it is 

 of subordinate importance as compared with the effect of the punish- 

 ment in deterring unconvicted persons from committing similar 

 offences. 



_'. It is likewise sometimes thought that punishment is inflicted for 

 the purpose of getting rid of offenders, or of rendering them physically 

 incapable of repeating their offence. Death has often been inflicted 

 for this purpose ; and bodily disablements of different sorts have been 

 inflicted for the name end ; transportation has likewise been often 

 recommended on the ground of its getting rid of convicts. This view 

 of punishment errs in the same manner as that just examined ; inas- 

 much as it is confined to the persons who have actually committed 

 offences. If all offenders were removed to a place of reward, they 

 would be got rid of, but not punished. The principle of getting rid of 

 the offender, or his confinement, for the purpose of protecting society 

 against the known dangerous tendencies of a person, is properly appli 

 cable in the case of m-idmen. 



A detailed account of the punishments which have been used in 

 different nations may be found in different works on antiquities and 

 law books. See, for the Greeks, Wachsmuth's ' Greek Antiquities,' 

 vol. ii. ; Hermann's ' Greek Antiquities,' 139 ; for the Romans, 

 Haubold's ' Lineamenta,' 147; for the ancient Germans and for 

 Kur.'jie generally in the middle ages, Grimm's ' Deutsche Uechtsalter- 

 thtimer,' b. v., ch. 3 ; for modern France, ' Le Code Penal/ liv. 1 ; and 

 for England, Blackatone's ' Commentaries/ vol. iv. 



The Secitmlaiy Punishments inflicted in this country are noticed 

 under CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS and PENAL SERVITUDE. 



An idle question is sometimes raised as to the right of a government 

 to inflict death as a punishment for crimes, or, as it is also stated, as to 

 the lawfulness of capital punishment. That a government has the 

 power of inflicting capital punishment connot be doubted; and in 

 order to determine whether that power is rightfully exercised, it is 

 necessary to consider whether its infliction is, on the whole, beneficial 

 to the community. The following considerations may serve to deter- 

 mine this question respecting any given class of crimes. Death is 

 unquestionably the most formidable of all punishments ; the common 

 sense of mankind, and the experience of all ages and countries, bear 

 evidence to the truth of this remark. Moreover, capital punishment 

 effectually gets rid of the convict. On the other hand, capital punish- 

 ment, from its severity and consequent formidableuess, is likely to 

 become unpopular ; and hence, from the unwillingness of judges and 

 juries to convict for capital offences, and of governments to carry 

 capital sentences into effect, uncertain. Whenever the infliction of 

 capital punishments becomes uncertain, their efficacy ceases, and they 

 ought to be mitigated. An uncertain punishment is not feared, and 

 consequently the pain caused by its actual infliction is wasted. 

 Capital punishments ought therefore to be pronounced only for crimes 

 which could not be effectually prevented by a secondary punishment, 

 and for which they are actually inflicted with as much constancy as 

 the necessary defects of judicial procedure will allow. 



PUPIL, ARTIFICIAL. The operation of forming an artificial 

 aperture in the iris is required iu a variety of cases in which the 

 passage of light through the natural pupil to the deeper seated parts of 

 the eye is obstructed ; and to meet the different exigencies of these 

 several cases various operations have been suggested, each of which 

 in its turn deserves to be preferred. The chief of these are l.the 

 tearing away a portion of the iris from its attachment to the ciliary 

 ligament [EYE], a method which is however now very rarely employed ; 

 2, the making a simple incision through some part of the iris, by the 

 retraction of whose edges an elliptical or circular aperture is pro- 

 duced; 3, the making a portion of the iris protrude through an 

 aperture in the cornea, and cutting it off. In whatever way the 

 operation be performed, it is necessary to make the aperture in the 

 iris as large as possible, that when it contracts in the process of 

 cicatrisation, it may not be too small to permit the passage of a 

 sufficient quantity of light for useful vision. 



PURCHASE, corrupted from the Latin Perquisitio, is defined by 

 Littleton (i. 12) to be " the possession of lands or tenements that a 

 man hath by his deed or agreement, unto which possession he cometh 

 not by title of descent from any of his ancestors, or of his cousins 

 (consanguinei), but by his own deed ; " and thus comprehends all the 

 modes of acquiring p^perty in land otherwise than by descent. [DE- 

 SCENT ; PROPERTY.] 



PURGATION. [ORDEAL.] 



PURGATORY (' a place of expiation/ from the Latin verb fuiyare, 

 ' to cleanse ') is the name given by Roman Catholics to an intermediate 

 state of souls after death, and before the final judgment, during which 

 they are supposed to expiate by certain punishments the guilt which 

 they have incurred through life. Roman Catholic divines teach that 

 it is only the souls of those who die in a state of repentance and in the 

 communion of the church that are admitted into purgatory ; those 

 who die impenitent, or in a state of unbelief, are doomed to everlasting 

 punishment. As for the duration of the term of expiation in purgatory, 

 that is a matter which rests with divine justice, and varies according to 

 the guilt of the parties, but Roman Catholics believe that the prayers 

 of the living and other pious works may serve to shorten the term of 

 souls in purgatory. This has given rise to the doctrine of indulgences, 

 with which that of purgatory is closely connected. [INDULGENCE.] 

 The Protestant and other churches which dissent from the church of 

 Rome do not believe iu purgatory. No mention of purgatory appears 

 before the time of Augustine, who, in some of his works, speaks of it 

 in terms not very explicit. The doctrine is said to have been first 

 inculcated as a matter of belief by Gregory the Great, at the end of 

 the 6th century. 



PURITANS, a name first given in the reign of Queen Elizabeth to 

 such clergymen of the Church of England as declined to subscribe to its 

 liturgy, ceremonies, and discipline, according to the requirements of 

 the bishops in their respective dioceses. Fuller assigns the origin 

 of this name to the year 1504, and Strype to the year 1569; but it 

 seems not very easy to ascertain the exact date when any such name 

 might have been first used. The clergymen so called were advocates 

 for a further reformation than the existing authorities deemed it 

 proper to sanction ; they desired a form of worship more simple and 

 pure than they believed that to be of the church as then established. 

 They were called Puritans probably out of derision, and the name was 

 shortly applied to the laity as well as to the clergy. The Puritans 

 were by other writers of the 17th century generally called non-con- 

 formists, a name first applied to men who objected to the clerical 

 vestments about 1550. As Puritans they made a great figure in the 

 Civil War against Charles I., but they very shortly separated into more 

 definite sects, as Presbyterians, Baptists, &c. For a general history of 

 the Puritans, the work of Neal, 011 the one hand, and, on the other 

 hand, the works of Strype and Collier, may be consulted. On the 



