seems very doubtful whether any pleasures addressed to the remaining
senses of hearing, of touch, or of taste, can be said to compensate for
the loss of sight. Neither does blindness, any more than death, admit of
degree or apportionment. In this respect, _burning_ or the use of fire
as a punishment, which has been suggested, though not absolutely
advised, by Bentham, would have a decisive preference. "Fire," writes
that voluminous jurist and legislator, "may be employed as an instrument
of punishment without occasioning death. This punishment is variable in
its nature, through all the degrees of severity of which there can be
any need. It would be necessary carefully to determine, on the test of
the law, the part of the body which ought to be exposed to the action of
fire; the intensity of the fire; the time during which it ought to be
applied; and the paraphernalia to be employed to increase the terror of
the punishment. In order to render the description more striking, a
print might be annexed, in which the operation should be
represented."--(_Works_, vol. i. p. 407.)

What is still more to the point, the punishment of blinding is quite as
repugnant to those sentiments of humanity which are said to be outraged
by the depriving a fellow creature of his life. As we have before
intimated, the spectacle of pain inflicted is at all times an evil in
itself. Even the presence of those gloomy buildings, devoted to all the
wretched purposes of incarceration, is, we should say, a public
calamity. The more men see of misery, the more callous do they become to
it; the less effort do they make to relieve; the more ready are they to
inflict it. Punishments should be multiplied as little as possible. Very
slight offences had better be left to the correction of public opinion,
and very grave offences should be severely visited, as well to spare
punishment as to prevent crime. We at once admit that it is an evil--the
spectacle of putting a man to death. But this of putting out his eyes
is, in act, scarce less revolting, and the spectacle is perpetuated. The
public execution lasts his lifetime. There is something, too, from which
we recoil in associating what has hitherto been the most pitiful
affliction of humanity with the idea of punishment of crime. A blind man
walks amongst us the universally commiserated--and good need he has of
our commiseration; it would be a sore addition to his calamity to make
his condition one of suspected