of these felons, we too might have been felons. Does it follow that we
ought not to have received the punishment of felons? Is this sort of
_argumentum ad hominem_, which makes the crime in imagination our own,
to bribe us into an utterly ruinous indulgence towards it? Crime is not
punished on earth--as divines teach us it will be punished in heaven--on
a principle of retributive justice, and according to our moral deserts.
To prove that this is not the principle of judicial punishment, we have
only to call to mind that, whereas, in a moral point of view, the force
of temptation diminishes the guilt, men, in framing their laws,
invariably increase the punishment in proportion to the temptation. The
facility to commit a crime, is one great element in the temptation to
commit it; and this facility has been always considered (as in the case
of forgery) to call for a counterbalance in the severity of the penalty.

In matters of penal legislation, there are two currents of thought,
which must be always kept distinct. The one relates to the natural and
little cultivated feelings of mankind, which demand retaliation for
injuries committed--a vindictive or retributive justice. Here is found
the rude motive power by and on which legislation has to work; sometimes
shaping these feelings to its purposes, sometimes shaping its purposes
to them. The other current of ideas is purely legislative, purely
prospective, having for its sole end the well-being of society, and
looking on punishment; not as retributive, or vindictive, or as morally
due, but as a sad necessity for the preservation of order.

In reference to the latter and only legislative mode of thinking, how
extremely illogical does it appear this attempt to ward off the penal
blow from a guilty party, or to excite our commiseration for him on the
ground that we all share the same passions and frailties of that guilty
party! Why, if such passions and frailties were not general, there would
be little need of punishment. It is because they are general, that the
legislature is compelled to be so watchful and energetic. If to take the
object of desire from our neighbour were a rare propensity, an
extraordinary phenomenon, we might let the prison sink into happy ruin,
and a most cheerful desolation.

We have seen how the German, in his metaphysical manner, disposed of the
right of society to put one of its members to death; the Captain, though
no metaphysician, proves, in a man