but as to the nature of my opinion about you there can be no
doubt."'[135]

Hence the purely 'deterrent' theory of punishment is utterly
unsatisfactory. We should punish not simply to prevent crime, but to
show our hatred of crime. Criminal law is 'in the nature of a
persecution of the grosser forms of vice, and an emphatic assertion of
the principle that the feeling of hatred and the desire of vengeance
above mentioned, (i.e. the emotion, whatever its proper name, produced
by the contemplation of vice on healthily constituted minds) 'are
important elements in human nature, which ought in such cases to be
satisfied in a regular public and legal manner.[136] This is one of the
cases in which Fitzjames fully recognises the importance of some of
Mill's practical arguments, though he disputes their position in the
theory. The objections to making men moral by legislation are, according
to him, sufficiently recognised by the Benthamite criterion condemning
inadequate or excessively costly means. The criminal law is necessarily
a harsh and rough instrument. To try to regulate the finer relations of
life by law, or even by public opinion, is 'like trying to pull an
eyelash out of a man's eye with a pair of tongs: they may pull out the
eye, but they will never get hold of the eyelash.'[137] But it is not
the end, but the means that are objectionable. Fitzjames does not object
in principle even to sumptuary laws. He can never, he says, look at a
lace machine, and think of all the toil and ingenuity wasted, with
patience.[138] But he admits that repressive laws would be impossible
now, though in a simpler age they may have been useful. Generally, then,
the distinction between 'self-regarding' and 'extra-regarding' conduct
is quite relevant, so far as it calls attention to the condition of the
probable efficacy of the means at our disposal. But it is quite
irrelevant in a definition of the end. The end is to suppress
immorality, not to obviate particular inconveniences resulting from
immorality; and one great use of the criminal law is that, in spite of
its narrow limitations, it supplies a solid framework round which public
opinion may consolidate itself. The sovereign is, in brief, a great
teacher of the moral law so far as his arm can reach.

The same principles are applied in a part of the book which probably
gave more offence than any other to his Liberal opponents. The State
cannot be impartial in regard to morals, for mo