180 Soczal Science Congress. 
free-will on His creatures hath declared them accountable 
for its abuse ; and, administering justice in mercy towards 
the numbers deceived or compelled into blood-guiltiness, 
He condemns those that have betrayed or forced them as 
their accomplices or their instruments to the unspeakable 
enduring torments of hell.” 
Shortly after the conclusion of this address, the Sections 
commenced their meetings. 
Mr. M. D. HILL read a special paper on Capital Punish- 
ment, of which the following is the substance :— 
“Capital punishment, though retained in our criminal 
code, will probably be reserved for culprits. convicted of 
deliberate murder. If so, the convicts to whom imprison- 
ment for life will be applicable may be ranged in two 
classes—I. Such, as, by ferocity of disposition, or in gusts 
of ungoverned passion, have inflicted death, or serious, per- 
manent, and irremediable injury on the objects of their 
attack ; and in this class will be included convicts guilty of 
murder in the highest degree, if reprieved by the Crown. 
2. Convicts whom repeated convictions after punishment 
for felony—or grave misdemeanours, like perjury, the ob- 
taining money or goods on false pretences. or the wilful 
uttering of base coin—show to be incorrigible. The pro- 
tection of the public demands that convicts condemned to 
imprisonment for life should be sent to a gaol specially 
erected to receive them, from which escape should be made 
absolutely impossible, and from which discharge should be 
made so difficult that it could rarely occur. Thus, I con- 
template that the vast majority of convicts sentenced to 
perpetual imprisonment will change their gaol only for 
their grave. Such an inexorable fate, when it became 
known, would have, I believe, all the deterrent effect which 
punishment is competent to produce; unless, indeed, the 
treatment of the prisoner were made such as to excite the 
envy of poor labourers at large. For myself, I do not 
think this a very probable event, even if we were to recur, 
as we never shall do, to the false indulgences now happily 
eradicated from our prison discipline. Confinement to one 
spot, with more or less of isolation, with severe restrictions 
upon correspondence, and exclusion from knowledge of 
what is passing in the world beyond the-walls, would be, 
in all ranks of life, save to persons very exceptionally con- 
stituted, felt to be a hardship all but intolerable. But when 
to these privations you add abstinence from alcoholic be- 
verages of every kind, and from tobacco, you present a 
: 
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