ls used to be hanged
in public, but experience failed to show that these ghastly
exhibitions had much deterrent effect on the community. Besides, it is
rather ridiculous to say, I do not punish you for the crime you have
committed, I punish you as a warning to others. In these circumstances
the effect of punishment is not to be upon the person punished, but
upon a third party who has not fallen into crime. Unless the
punishment is just in itself, society has no right to inflict it in
the hope of scaring others from criminal courses. Justice administered
in this spirit, turns the convicted offender into a whipping boy; the
punishment ceases to be related to the offence, and is merely related
to the effect it will have on a certain circle of spectators.

In our view, punishment ought to be regarded as at once an expiation
and a discipline, or, in other words, an expiatory discipline. This
definition includes all that is valuable in the theories just
reviewed, and excludes all that is imperfect in them. The criminal is
an offender against the fundamental order of society in somewhat the
same way as a disobedient child is an offender against the centre of
authority in the home or the school. The punishment inflicted on the
child may take the form of revenge, or it may take the form of
retribution, or it may take the form of deterrence, but it undoubtedly
takes its highest form when it combines expiation with discipline.
Punishment of this nature still remains punitive as it ought to do,
but it is at the same time a kind of punishment from which something
may be learned. It does not merely consist in inflicting pain,
although the presence of this element is essential to its efficacy; it
consists rather in inflicting pain in such a way as will tend to
discipline and reform the character. Such a conception of punishment
excludes the barbarous element of vengeance; it is based upon the
civilised ideas of justice and humanity, or rather upon the sentiment
of justice alone, for justice is never truly just except when its
tendency is also to humanise.

"Sine caritate justicia
Vindicationi similis."

From the theory of punishment let us now turn to its methods. The most
severe of these is the penalty of death. A great deal has been said
and written both for and against the retention of this form of
punishment. To set forth the arguments on both sides in a fair and
adequate manner would require a volume; it must, therefore,