14 
REVIEW. 
ment, be brought to regard a humanity -medal in the same 
light a soldier does a good-conduct medal ; and we feel more 
assured still, that when once this came to be made public, 
such preference might be given by hirers to the medalled 
cabman as might tell to his interest, if not to his honour. 
Mr. Adams Smith, the gentleman who went to Paris for 
the purpose of aiding the exertions in the good cause of his 
“most excellent and kind-hearted friend, the Vicomte de 
Valmer,” inclines to the same opinion in protesting strongly 
against the efficacy of punishment in all cases. 
“ I do not deny that punishment may be in many cases 
advisable — nay, necessary: but I do not think that punish- 
ment should be the only means by which we should carry out 
our objects, but that it should be auxiliary and subsidiary to 
something else much more effective, and therefore much 
more important. And why do I not think that punishment 
is effective, — at least to the extent we should wish it? In 
the first place, punishment presupposes that the cruelty and 
the crime have been committed, — it is punishment that we 
inflict, not cruelty that we prevent; in the second place, how 
many hundreds, how many thousands of cases of cruelty are 
there which pass by unnoticed, unheeded, and unpunished ; 
for what man would expose his cruelty to the glaring eye of 
day, when he must know that punishment will be inflicted 
on him for the commission of that cruelty; but most assuredly 
the cruelty will be committed in secret, so that it shall not 
bring down punishment upon its perpetrator. In the third 
place, I doubt the beneficial effect of punishment, inasmuch 
as we must suppose that the cruel man is generally a vindic- 
tive man ; and he again will punish in secret the animal which 
he may choose to suppose the author of his own suffering. 
And lastly, I would ask whether any one can believe that any 
laws can, in practice, reach other than the worst and most 
glaring eases. The cases of cruelty are so multiplied in their 
number, and so various and so nice in their degrees, that the 
most stringent laws can never embrace them ; and even if 
they could, no magistrate would ever put them in force. 
Such cases, which in fact form ninety-nine parts in one 
hundred of the whole, must be met in some other way ; they 
must be met by inculcating good principles — by educating 
the feelings, and by training the mind.” 
The suggestions of Mr. Daniell — who likewise spoke at 
