On this page
-
Text (2)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
Prison ] % sci pUne . 579
Untitled Article
t . eM to the aggravation of the circumstances and to the offender ' s known character . In prison , he must not be a burden to the community , and must work , not only for his bread , but for the expenses -which he has caused to be incurred in secluding him . This is the reason of his hard labour . If , in his seclusion , he attempts further injury to those yet within his reach , a closer confinement is ordered for the same purpose as the first . Hence
solitary confinement , and , if ever necessary , fetters . The other regulations of his prison arise , some out of the position in which the culprit has placed himself , and not out of the will of his judges and jailers ; and others out of their responsibility for his benefit , that he shall re-enter the world no worse , as far as in them lies , than when he quitted it . Hence arise the circumstances of his abode , his employments , his recreations , —in short , the routine of his prison-life . Is not this what is wanted for the
security of society ? Is not this still punishment , —most irksome punishment to the offender , while it allows him to feel himself , not the victim of tyranny , but the ward of justice ? Is not this the discipline to satisfy instead of revolting the injured , to obviate the oppressions of the agents of the law , to educate the moral sense of the community , while it answers all the proposed objects of an arbitrary penal system ? Is it not easy to be understood in its purpose and in its workings ?—far more easy than the inexplicable and empirical method , —if method it may be called , —
according to which justice is at present administered ? That human governments will in time bring their penal rule into an analogy with the divine , we cannot doubt . The divine government ordained arbitrary punishments in the infancy of the peculiar people , and afterwards withdrew its ordinances when they became capable of recognizing and anticipating natural consequences ; and thus ought it to be . with human governments . In barbarous ages and countries , crimes are little less arbitrary than punishments ; as in Russia , not very long ago , the wearing
of shoe-strings was punishable with imprisonment , and in India the killing of a cow , with death . In proportion as states approximate to a right application of the eternal principles of morals , should their penal government approximate to the divine rule of natural consequence ; for which precisely the same reasons exist as that a parent should lay aside the rod and the holidaytreat when his child grows up into the youth . It is a difficult task to arrange the penal government of a
nation like ours in its present state , combining as it does the wisdom of manhood and the lowest ignorance and folly of infancy , — much of the refinement of advanced civilization , and some of the brutalization of a savage state . It is difficult to provide punishments which it does not shock the consciences and sensibilities of the injured to inflict , and which may at the same time be proapectively dreadful to the aggressor , This difficulty , great at the
Untitled Article
2 T 8
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1832, page 579, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1820/page/3/
-