[1815; publ. 1840]




ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH

A FRAGMENT

The first law which it becomes a Reformer to propose and support,
at the approach of a period of great political change, is the
abolition of the punishment of death.

It is sufficiently clear that revenge, retaliation, atonement,
expiation, are rules and motives, so far from deserving a place in
any enlightened system of political life, that they are the chief
sources of a prodigious class of miseries in the domestic circles
of society. It is clear that however the spirit of legislation may
appear to frame institutions upon more philosophical maxims, it
has hitherto, in those cases which are termed criminal, done little
more than palliate the spirit, by gratifying a portion of it; and
afforded a compromise between that which is bests--the inflicting
of no evil upon a sensitive being, without a decisively beneficial
result in which he should at least participates--and that which is
worst; that he should be put to torture for the amusement of those
whom he may have injured, or may seem to have injured.

Omitting these remoter considerations, let us inquire what, DEATH
is; that punishment which is applied as a measure of transgressions
of indefinite shades of distinction, so soon as they shall have