imself as man." Society may
limit the exercise of this right, but not annul it; may mutilate the man
as it thinks fit, but must leave so much of him behind as may bear the
name of man. What is to be said of such metaphysical vagaries as these?
If this pass for reasoning, the unlawfulness of imprisonment may be
proved in the same manner; one has but to assert that man has an _a
priori_ indefeasible right to the use of the limbs which nature has
given to him. But no man has any _right_ whatever, but under the implied
condition of performing corresponding _duties_. This individual, whom
the law will not any longer allow to develope his humanity, should, if
he had wished to develope himself further, have allowed the like liberty
to others.

But that which most remarkably distinguishes M. Zschokke's little
performance is the substitute for the punishment of death which it
suggests. We believe it was here that M. Sue derived an idea which
occupies so conspicuous a place in his _Mysteries of Paris_. That
substitute is _blindness_. "The blinded man," writes our author, "is an
eternal prisoner, without need of prison walls. He must envy other
culprits their chains--their darkest dungeons; for in the darkest
dungeons hope may penetrate, and _they_ may one day see the light again.
He must envy the dead, on whom the executioner has done his utmost; for
to him life itself has become one endless punishment. He is bound
without fetters--bound more securely than if he were locked to the oar
or welded to the rock. Every step, every movement, tells him of his
weakness and of his guilt. The living world around him--he has lost it
all; he retains only its sources of pain, and the unfading memory of his
own crime. Scoffed at by the unfeeling, pitied by some, by all
shunned--contempt and commiseration and scorn are the smarting scourges
to which he stands defenceless for the residue of his days."

A frightful punishment truly! But we are far from approving of it as a
substitute for death. In the first place, it is equally irrevocable; and
it is one, and perhaps the most cogent argument against
death-punishment, that it admits of no recall in case of error, no
remission or compensation in the event of sentence having been passed
upon an innocent man. Our author, indeed, seems to think otherwise; for
he reckons it amongst the advantages of this mode of punishment, that it
does admit of compensation if it has been unjustly inflicted. To us it