Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V. INTIMIDATION AND TORTURE. The second of the four methods of dealing with crime is repression by intimidation. The motive of retributory punishment is the desire to obtain indemnity for the past; that of deterrent punishment is the wish to gain security for the future. Retributory punishment is supposed to be an effort to adjust and close an account, on a mathematical basis; it is the equation of guilt and suffering -- the suffering of the wrong-doer against that of the party wronged, including the state with the individual. Or if guilt is measured, not by the resulting damage, but by the intention of the culprit, there is still, in the minds of those who justify the infliction of pain and loss upon a fellow-man on the ground of the satisfaction of abstract justice, a vague notion that some ascertainable or non-ascertainable amount of sorrow or agony, endured voluntarily or under compulsion by the guilty, will exactly balance the selfishness and malice which prompt any criminal action. Many men, looking at the question from its purely ethical side, imagine that punishment on any other basis is immoral. Others think that man has neither the power to read the heart and estimate guilt, nor the right to avenge it, but that such power and right are the prerogative of Deity. Instead of secking to restore the lost equilibrium of two hostile individuals in their relation to each other, or the v equilibrium between any individual and the community, they have in view the sole end of protecting the community against a repetition of the offence; and, to secure this end, they are ready to sacrifice any number of individuals. As against the social whole, in their opinion, the individual has no rights. That is to say, he has no rights which...
