as which formerly
prevailed concerning public justice. Punishment is no longer
considered, except by the ignorant and sanguinary, as vengeance from
the injured, or expiation from the guilty. We now distinctly
understand, that the greatest possible happiness of the whole society
must be the ultimate object of all just legislation; that the partial
evil of punishment is consequently to be tolerated by the wise and
humane legislator, only so far as it is proved to be necessary for the
general good. When a crime has been committed, it cannot be undone by
all the art, or all the power of man; by vengeance the most
sanguinary, or remorse the most painful. The past is irrevocable; all
that remains, is to provide for the future. It would be absurd, after
an offence has already been committed, to increase the sum of misery
in the world, by inflicting pain upon the offender, unless that pain
were afterwards to be productive of happiness to society, either by
preventing the criminal from repeating his offence, or by deterring
others from similar enormities. With this double view of restraining
individuals, by the recollection of past sufferings, from future
crimes, and of teaching others, by public examples, to expect, and to
fear, certain evils as the necessary consequences of certain actions
hurtful to society, all wise laws are framed, and all just punishments
are inflicted. It is only by the conviction that certain punishments
are essential to the general security and happiness, that a person of
humanity can, or ought, to fortify his mind against the natural
feelings of compassion. These feelings are the most painful, and the
most difficult to resist, when, as it sometimes unavoidably happens,
public justice requires the total sacrifice of the happiness, liberty,
or perhaps the life, of a fellow-creature, whose ignorance precluded
him from virtue, and whose neglected or depraved education prepared
him, by inevitable degrees, for vice and all its miseries. How
exquisitely painful must be the feelings of a humane judge, in
pronouncing sentence upon such a devoted being! But the law permits of
no refined metaphysical disquisitions. It would be vain to plead the
necessitarian's doctrine of an unavoidable connection between the past
and the future, in all human actions; the same necessity compels the
punishment that compels the crime; nor could, nor ought, the most
eloquent advocate, in a court of justice, to obtain a criminal's
ac