CONSCIENCE AND MORALITY 167 



of every healthy conscience as punishment by moral 

 degradation. Neglect of any reasonable opportunities 

 of improvement will similarly be blamed. But the duty 

 to improve is not general ; it cannot form a common 

 ground of justification for all punishments ; it clearly cannot 

 justify the severest of all, the forfeiture of life. On the other 

 hand, it is too general ; if the prospect of moral improve 

 ment justifies the forfeiture of liberty, there are very few 

 of us whom the state is not bound to keep in a reformatory. 

 The idea is probably derived from the punishment of chil 

 dren, which, no doubt, has no other justification. But it is 

 forgotten that these are still in statu pupillari. The 

 principle applies to those who have already forfeited their 

 liberty, and to those who have not yet acquired it, but to 

 no others. 



Neither is the forfeiture of life or liberty justified solely 

 as a deterrent to others, or to the same man, in case he may 

 be inclined to repeat his offence. In order to defend the 

 infliction of punishment, it is not necessary that the offence 

 should be published ; it may even be expedient that it 

 should not. The penalty of the iron mask offends no moral 

 principle. Nor can the more severe forms of punishment, 

 such as death or penal servitude for life, serve as a deterrent 

 to the criminal himself. Here, again, the propriety of 

 varying the punishment after it has been earned, so as to 

 make it deterrent, may be rightly taken into consideration. 

 When a man has already forfeited his liberty, the conversion 

 of his imprisonment, or any part of it, for flogging will 

 excite no moral disapprobation, unless it is shown that it 

 results in the moral deterioration of the criminal or of the 

 onlookers. 



Deprivation of liberty, with or without painful or 

 degrading concomitants, and still more of course, depriva 

 tion of life, are in themselves so great an offence to moral 

 feeling that they can never be justified by an appeal to mere 

 utility ; no increase, however great and widely spread, 

 to the happiness of his neighbours would reconcile a healthy 

 conscience to the treatment as a criminal of a man who 



