You may make devils there--nothing better; he must be already
twice a saint whom the smoke of your torments would not blacken to a
demon.

We may rest assured of this, that the actual infliction of the
punishment must always be an evil, as well to mind as body--as well to
society at large as to the culprit. If the threat alone could be
constantly efficacious--if the headlong obstinacy, the passion, and the
obtuseness of men would not oblige, from time to time, the execution of
the penalty, for the very purpose of sustaining the efficacy of the
threat--all would be well, and penal laws might be in full harmony with
the best educational institutions, and the highest interests of
humanity. But the moment the law from a threat becomes an act, and the
sentence goes forth, and the torture begins, a new but unavoidable train
of evils encounters us. There is war implanted in the very bosom of
society--hatred, and the giving and the sufferance of pain. And here, we
presume, is to be found the reason of the proverbially severe laws of
Draco, which, being instituted by a man of virtue and humanity, were yet
said to have been written in blood: he desired that the threat should be
effective, and that thus the evils of punishment, as well as of crime,
should be avoided.

Whatever is to be effected towards the genuine reformation of the
culprit, must be the result, not of the punishment itself, but of some
added ingredient, not of the essence of the punishment; as when hopes
are held out of reward, or part remission of the penalty, on the
practice of industry and a continuance of good behaviour.

And yet--some one may here object--we correct a child, we punish it, and
we reform. The very word correction has the double meaning of penalty
and amendment. If the plan succeeds so well with the infant, that he who
spares the rod is supposed to spoil the child, why should it utterly
fail with the adult? But mark the difference. You punish a child, and a
short while after you receive the little penitent back into your love;
nay, you caress it into penitence; and the reconcilement is so sweet,
that the infant culprit never, perhaps, has his affections so keenly
awakened as in these tearful moments of sorrow and forgiveness. The
heart is softer than ever, and the sense of shame at having offended is
kept sensitively alive. But if you withdrew your love--if, after
punishment inflicted, you still kept an averted countenance--if no
reconcileme