TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS, 193 
The perfection of a penal code will be found in the deterring from crime to the 
greatest extent practicable with the infliction of the least possible amount of 
punishment upon those who incur the penalties. 
Il. 
A second principle is required for regulating the methods of punishment. 
By the fact that crime is committed, the population is divided into two classes, 
The criminal class is composed of persons m whom the deterrent force of penal 
laws is overborne, either from defective mental capacity or from an excessive force 
of positive incentives to crime. . . 
he limitations to the deterrent force of penalties indicate that excessive severity 
of punishment will not be employed with success in combating those causal influ- 
ences in these persons. 
The dealing with these persons is a distinct problem from the dealing with the 
population generally. 
his secondary object of penal legislation is to be arrived at by adapting the 
methods of punishment to the causes in which the different forms of crimes 
originate. 
The solution of this problem requires :— 
i. An analysis of the causes of crime. 
These may be classed as 
1. Internal and External. 
2. Negative and Positive. 
8. Proximate and Remote. 
_ ii. An analysis of the moral and material influences of the available methods of 
punishment. 
The purely penal element of punishment is to be distinguished from its acces- 
sories, whether they are inseparable from it or intentional additions to it. 
The purely penal element ought to be addressed to the criminal passion. The 
accessories of the penal element must supply the influences for correcting the 
internal and for remedying the external causes of crime. 
III. 
Five kinds of punishment in use enumerated :—1, Capital punishment ; 2, cor- 
poral punishment ; 3, imprisonment, of which penal servitude is one modification ; 
4, restricted or conditional liberty ; 5, fines. 
The extent to which these several kinds of punishment were used in the year 
1872 was as follows :—Ist, thirty persons were sentenced to death, of whom fourteen 
were executed ; 2nd, 837 persons were sentenced to be whipped; 3rd, the commit- 
ments to prison were 158,141; 4th, 1514 persons were released under “tickets of 
leave,” and others were sentenced to police supervision without penal servitude, 
and 18,930 persons were released upon bail under sureties and upon their own 
recognizances ; 5th, the number of fines inflicted was 281,934, 
The results obtained from imprisonment considered. The recommitments not a 
fair test of its effects. The rate of the recommitments is generally misapprehended. 
The rate, correctly calculated, shows that of all persons committed to prison once 
75 or 76 per cent. do not return. After ‘epented commitment the rate increases 
‘rapidly. 
The imposing of restrictions or conditions upon liberty is a method of treatment 
which is now enforced every year upon about 2000 of the worst class of offenders, 
and upon 18,000 or 19,000 persons accused of the lighter forms of crime. It is 
proposed to extend this method of treatment to some of the 100,000 persons who 
come between these extremes of criminality. 
The Increase of Drunkenness among the Working Classes and the Causes of it. 
By the Rev. W. Catnz, M.A, 
A scientific writer in one of our periodicals, after describing the effect of the 
electric telegraph in promoting civilization in our own country and over all the 
