nt of civilization, the law
makes free with life, long after the private expenditure of it has been
checked or has ceased. Duels, brawls, assassinations, have nearly been
discontinued, and even war in some measure discountenanced, before the
law duly recognises the sacredness of human life. But the time comes.
One generation after another grows up with a still improving sense of
the majesty of life,--of the mystery of the existence of such a being as
man,--of the infinity of ideas and emotions in the mind of each, and of
the boundlessness of his social relations. These recognitions may not be
express; but they are sufficiently real to hold back the hand from
quenching life. The reluctance to destroy such a creation is found to be
on the increase. Men prefer suffering wrong to being accessary to so
fearful an act as what now appears a judicial murder: the law is left
unused,--is evaded,--and it becomes necessary to alter it. Capital
punishments are restricted,--are further restricted,--are abolished.
Such is the process. It is now all but completed in the United States:
it is advancing rapidly in England. During its progress further light is
thrown on the moral notions of a represented people by a change in the
character of other (called inferior) punishments. Bodily torments and
disfigurements go out. Torture and mutilation are discontinued, and
after a while the grosser mental inflictions. The pillory (as mere
ignominious exposure) was a great advance upon the maiming with which it
was once connected; but it is now discontinued as barbarous. All
ignominious exposure will ere long be considered equally
barbarous,--including capital punishment, of which such exposure is the
recommendatory principle. To refer once more to the Pennsylvania
case,--these notions of ignominious exposure are there so far outgrown,
that avoidance of it is the main principle of the management. Seclusion,
under the guardianship of the law, is there the method,--on the
principle of consideration to the weak, and of supreme regard to the
feeling of self-respect in the offender,--the feeling in which he is
necessarily most deficient. When we consider the brutalizing methods of
punishment in use in former times, and now in some foreign countries,
in contrast with the latest instituted and most successful, we cannot
avoid perceiving that such are indications of the moral notions of those
at whose will they exist, be they a council of despots, or an
ass