The main struggle lies between the other two.On the one side is the notion that there is a mystic bond between wrong and punishment; on the other, that the infliction of pain is only a means to an end.Hegel, one of the great expounders of the former view, puts it, in his quasi mathematical form, that, wrong being the negation of right, punishment is the negation of that negation, or retribution.Thus the punishment must be equal, in the sense of proportionate to the crime, because its only function is to destroy it.Others, without this logical apparatus, are content to rely upon a felt necessity that suffering should follow wrong-doing.
It is objected that the preventive theory is immoral, because it overlooks the ill-desert of wrong-doing, and furnishes no measure of the amount of punishment, except the lawgiver's subjective opinion in regard to the sufficiency of the amount of preventive suffering. In the language of Kant, it treats man as a thing, not as a person; as a means, not as an end in himself.It is said to conflict with the sense of justice, and to violate the fundamental principle of all free communities, that the members of such communities have equal rights to life, liberty, and personal security. In spite of all this, probably most English-speaking lawyers would accept the preventive theory without hesitation.As to the violation of equal rights which is charged, it may be replied that the dogma of equality makes an equation between individuals only, not between an individual and the community.No society has ever admitted that it could not sacrifice individual welfare to its own existence.If conscripts are necessary for its army, it seizes them, and marches them, with bayonets in their rear, to death.It runs highways and railroads through old family places in spite of the owner's protest, paying in this instance the market value, to be sure, because no civilized government sacrifices the citizen more than it can help, but still sacrificing his will and his welfare to that of the rest. If it were necessary to trench further upon the field of morals, it might be suggested that the dogma of equality applied even to individuals only within the limits of ordinary dealings in the common run of affairs.You cannot argue with your neighbor, except on the admission for the moment that he is as wise as you, although you may by no means believe it.In the same way, you cannot deal with him, where both are free to choose, except on the footing of equal treatment, and the same rules for both.
The ever-growing value set upon peace and the social relations tends to give the law of social being the appearance of the law of all being.But it seems to me clear that the ultima ratio, not only regum, but of private persons, is force, and that at the bottom of all private relations, however tempered by sympathy and all the social feelings, is a justifiable self-preference.If a man is on a plank in the deep sea which will only float one, and a stranger lays hold of it, he will thrust him off if he can.
When the state finds itself in a similar position, it does the same thing.
The considerations which answer the argument of equal rights also answer the objections to treating man as a thing, and the like.
If a man lives in society, he is liable to find himself so treated.The degree of civilization which a people has reached, no doubt, is marked by their anxiety to do as they would be done by.It may be the destiny of man that the social instincts shall grow to control his actions absolutely, even in anti-social situations.But they have not yet done so, and as the rules of law are or should be based upon a morality which is generally accepted, no rule founded on a theory of absolute unselfishness can be laid down without a breach between law and working beliefs.
If it be true, as I shall presently try to show, that the general principles of criminal and civil liability are the same, it will follow from that alone that theory and fact agree in frequently punishing those who have been guilty of no moral wrong, and who could not be condemned by any standard that did not avowedly disregard the personal peculiarities of the individuals concerned.If punishment stood on the moral grounds which are proposed for it, the first thing to be considered would be those limitations in the capacity for choosing rightly which arise from abnormal instincts, want of education, lack of intelligence, and all the other defects which are most marked in the criminal classes.I do not say that they should not be, or at least I do not need to for my argument.I do not say that the criminal law does more good than harm.I only say that it is not enacted or administered on that theory.
There remains to be mentioned the affirmative argument in favor of the theory of retribution, to the effect that the fitness of punishment following wrong-doing is axiomatic, and is instinctively recognized by unperverted minds.I think that it will be seen, on self-inspection, that this feeling of fitness is absolute and unconditional only in the case of our neighbors.It docs not seem to me that any one who has satisfied himself that an act of his was wrong, and that he will never do it again, would feel the least need or propriety, as between himself and an earthly punishing power alone, of his being made to suffer for what he had done, although, when third persons were introduced, he might, as a philosopher, admit the necessity of hurting him to frighten others.But when our neighbors do wrong, we sometimes feel the fitness of making them smart for it, whether they have repented or not.The feeling of fitness seems to me to be only vengeance in disguise, and I have already admitted that vengeance was an element, though not the chief element, of punishment.
