that the patient from either hospital
should be remitted to society with a character equally free from stain?
Is the man to be received by the community with the same compassionate
welcome who has gone into prison to be cured of a propensity to theft,
as one who has entered an hospital to be relieved of a disease?

An hospital is a word of no inviting sound--and physic, no doubt, is
sufficiently nauseous to be not inaptly compared to flogging, or any
other punitive discipline: but nauseous drugs are not the only means of
cure; good nursing, vigilant attendance, sometimes generous diet, have a
large share in the curative process. And in the hospital of the mind,
the lenitive and fostering measures have a still larger share in the
work of a moral restoration. Were this principle of cure, of perfect
restoration, to be adopted as the first principle of penal legislation,
it would come to this, that a poor man would have no better way of
recommending himself to the fatherly care of the state than by the
commission of a crime, and that none, in the lower classes of society,
would be so well trained and disciplined for advancing their fortunes in
the world, as those who commenced their career by violating the laws of
their country.

Imprisonment, with its various accompaniments and modifications, is the
great reformatory punishment. Indeed, with the exception of
death--confined almost entirely to the case of murder--it is the only
punishment bestowed on serious offences. Imprisonment of some kind,
either at home or in the colonies, is the penal safeguard of society;
and we must be cautious that we do not so far diminish its terrors, that
it should cease to hold out any threat to a needy malefactor. But before
we allude to the discipline of the prison, we must take a glance at this
great exception of death, which it is the object of many of our zealous
reformers entirely to erase from the penal code.

That this extreme punishment should be reserved for the extreme crime of
murder, seems generally admitted; and the practice, if not the letter,
of our law has conformed to this opinion. It would be useless,
therefore, to argue on the propriety of inflicting this penalty on other
and less enormous offences. The question is narrowed to this--shall
death continue to be the punishment of the murderer?

Those who contend for the entire abolition of this punishment, are in
the habit of enlarging much on the inadequate effect produced