Aggravating circumstance

“ With this double view of restraining individuals, by the recollection of past sufferings, from future crimes, and of teaching others, by public examples, to expect, and to fear, certain evils as the necessary consequences of certain actions hurtful to society, all wise laws are framed, and all just punishments are inflicted. ”

“ How we gloat upon the deadly anguish of a fellow-human heart through all the terrible scenes in the administration of justice, from the first examination of the captured criminal, to the last dread moment upon the fatal drop! ”

“ The fear of one who sees how his haste and breed can be called punishable criminal negligence, was in his face. The things that had been human, sprawled stiff before him, accusing him. But the worst was the presence of those grim, silent men, who might add him forcibly to the death-list. ”

“ The only relief from our sufferings lay in the resources of our own minds, and in our mutual endeavours to please and console one another: the circumstances of aggravation were the necessity of daily bearing witness to the most barbarous punishments inflicted upon wretched individuals under the semblance of justice, and the occasional deprivation of our food, either by the fraud of the Sepoys who attended us, or the caprice or cruelty of their superiors. ”

“ All law, says the utilitarian, implies 'sanctions'—motives equally operative upon all members of society; and, as the last resort, so far as criminal law is concerned, the sanction of physical suffering. ”

“ Not regardless of consequences, we must yet meet consequences; seeing the hazards which surround the discharge of public duty, it must yet be discharged. For myself, Sir, I shun no responsibility justly devolving on me, here or elsewhere, in attempting to maintain the cause. ”

“ Beneath the scourge, what is there that cannot be wrung from the lips of the sufferer? His agony is over-whelming, and he seeks to escape by speaking falsely. The officials profit by the opportunity, and cause him to say what will best confirm his guilt. ”

“ We may choose whether or not we will act; but the consequences, and they may be most deadly,—the consequences of our action or our no-action we cannot escape. They may fall upon us with a crushing power at our very firesides, and ruin our private and domestic peace for ever. ”

“ The State's behavior is violence, and it calls its violence "law"; that of the [Pg 258] individual, "crime." ”

“ The law of cause and effect stands for natural consequences; the law of punishment substitutes artificial consequences; and we fly to punishment largely as an escape from the results of our age-long indifference to natural consequences. Having produced the criminal we set to work to destroy his self-respect, as a short cut to the preservation of our own. ”

“ Can it, then, be justifiable, on account of any vague fears of we know not what evils, to reject this just, salutary and hitherto uninjurious measure; and to cling to a system which we know, by certain experience, is producing crime, misery and death, during every day of its existence? ”

“ How frightful a thing it is to consider what—under an overruling hand and will omnipotent—may be the consequences of the smallest deed we do. The consequences immediate, proximate, future! How many lives, what an amount of misery, how much damnation, may depend upon a light word, an idle jest, a sportive trick! ”

“ It is, I think, a maxim of government, that the importance of the political inconveniences, arising from the impunity of a crime, are directly as the injury to the publick, and inversely as the difficulty of proof. ”

“ We can not measure guilt or culpability, which may be of all degrees from nothing to infinity perhaps, but we can to some extent scale the effectiveness of restraint, if criminal impulse is not absolutely irresistible. ”

“ Yet there was no sign of it: no pointing, accusing hands reached out, nobody gave way to the natural impulse of those who have witnessed a revolting crime—to hurl themselves upon the criminal, to strike him or do him injury. ”

“ We must, we ought to, lament the fate of the many gallant men who have fallen, and the calamities of those who survive; but what in them has been a mistaken policy, will become guilt in those who, on a similar occasion, shall not be warned by their example. ”

“ But we must, with regret, profess our belief, that it has often far transcended these limits; and has exhibited itself in forms and modes, which, if permitted to dictate the tone of our criminal legislation, would tend to the rapid increase of crime. ”

“ The laying unreasonable burdens and restraints upon a people, will, if they are submitted to, debase their minds, break their spirits, enervate their courage, and sink them into cowards: if they are not submitted to, the consequence will be internal tumult, disorder, strife and contempt of government ”

“ The consequences of crime are as clearly exhibited as its motives and its supposed advantages, and few are hardy enough to declare or to exhibit a carelessness for punishment, or a contempt for the bitter fruits of their misdeeds. ”

“ The daily habits of one so situated must imply, to some extent, an ignorance of the precise detail of all that may be consequent upon them. We think it natural, (nay, with a due regard to truth, inevitable,) that one so situated, if called upon on an emergency, should admit his inability to enumerate all that he had done,-all that he had authorized to be done through others, and every consequence which might flow from the one or the other. ”

“ Under this head we comprehend not only assassinations, and robberies committed by the populace, but by grandees and magistrates; whose example acts with more force, and at a greater distance, destroying the ideas of justice and duty among the subjects, and substituting that of the right of the strongest, equally dangerous to those who exercise it, and to those who suffer. ”

“ We have gone through many crises in our short history, and we know that thought is nothing before the law, but the word is an act—as guilty at times as the act of killing, or burglary, or any of the violent crimes that disgrace humanity and require the police. ”

“ Let the other be tempted to some terrible crime—as men would consider it—but under an almost overwhelming pressure of motives—of course not quite overwhelming, as that would destroy all responsibility. ”

“ But we warn him and his companions in crime, that neither strength nor cunning will much longer avail them; their strength shall be broken, their cunning confounded, and their whip-scared victims released from their chain. God speed the day! ”

“ And now, apart from all problems of manoeuvring, of rules of the road, of the judgment of the men in command, away from their possible errors and from the points the Court will have to decide, if we ask ourselves what it was that was needed to avert this disaster costing so many lives, spreading so much sorrow, and to a certain point shocking the public conscience—if we ask that question, what is the answer to be? ”

“ Walking in processions, masked beyond recognition, enduring constant castigations from each other, bearing over the roughest roads and across country the heavy crosses we have seen, and with the “pride that apes humility” enduring the utmost suffering, they consider themselves to have laid in a stock of grace sufficient to over-balance all possible crime during the coming twelvemonth. ”

“ I have to consider on the one hand the grave nature of your offence, the deliberate way in which you subsequently altered the counterfoil, the danger you caused to an innocent man—and that, to my mind, is a very grave point—and finally I have to consider the necessity of deterring others from following your example. ”

“ Disobedience of orders, combinations to refuse duty, dishonest conduct, personal insolence, and habitual negligence and backwardness, are all causes which justify punishment in a greater or less degree. ”

“ There are, therefore, no bounds to its desire of exactness in the conformity between its will and the actions willed; and by consequence to the strength of that terror which is its procuring cause. Every the most minute failure must be visited with the heaviest infliction; and as failure in extreme exactness must frequently happen, the occasions of cruelty must be incessant. ”

“ But even though we may owe every character of body and mind to the fulfilment of some such inexorable law in the past, yet the witnessing of the operation brings ever a feeling of cruelty, of injustice somewhere. ”

“ The principal objects which human punishments have in view, are undoubtedly restraint and example: restraint, or removal, of an individual member, whose vicious habits are likely to be prejudicial to the society. ”

“ When the action of each and all is the necessary and sufficient cause of the whole damage. This condition is fulfilled when one commands or counsels an unjust act and another in consequence performs it. ”

“ Should the consequences prove fatal to those who attempt to intercept us, the fault will be theirs. I have devoted myself to the accomplishment of my object, and bloodshed will not stay me in effecting it. ”

“ It is nevertheless true, however unpleasant the thought may be, that at any moment we may find ourselves in the centre of a whirlpool of events where individual action on our part will be necessary unless we are willing to allow some vicious and cruel violation of the law to go unpunished. ”

“ The uncertainty of their lives, liability to be revenged upon, and treacherous conduct generates suspicion. Being subject to severe reverses, extremes of want and danger, etc., a recklessness of life follows. ”

“ In both lie dangers, difficulties, and troubles, which no human foresight can foreshadow or perceive; but they are not equal in magnitude. One is beset with humiliation, dishonor, emeutes, rebellion,—with submission in the beginning to all, and at all times, and confiscation and slavery in the end. ”

“ On the contrary, all acts of society or individuals, which tend to destroy, injure, poison or sully this sacred life, or to bar its ordained progress are, in themselves, unholy, wrong, criminal and cruel, and in commission, become the greatest and most unpardonable of all sins. ”

“ Your mind could endure anything, even the most grievous suffering, anything save one thing: the consciousness of having done an injustice however slight. If you submit, and if these men are condemned even to a few years' imprisonment, their fate would prey upon your mind as murder would on any one else. This I know, and I would warn you against it as strongly as I can.... Let us look at the worst that could happen, the scarcely conceivable prospect of your dismissal. ”

“ The injury may consist, not only in the direct violation of personal or political rights, but in wrongfully withholding what is due, or in the refusal of a reasonable reparation for injuries committed, or of adequate explanation or security in respect to manifest and impending danger. ”

“ Circumstances are compulsory, from the absence of a power to resist or control them: and if the absence likewise be the effect of circumstances.... the evil derives from the circumstances.... and such evil is not sin."* Do you say that you are independent of all circumstances, that you can control them, that you have a free will? ”

“ It presents, believe me, no possible danger. When one is confronted by an inexplicable and painful position like yours, one must needs employ special means and resort to drastic and, I admit, very illegal measures. ”

“ We shall reflect that he already bears, or will bear, the whole penalty of his error; if he spoils his life by mismanagement, we shall not, for that reason, desire to spoil it still further: instead of wishing to punish him, we shall rather endeavour to alleviate his punishment, by showing him how he may avoid or cure the evils his conduct tends to bring upon him. ”

“ For the complex and varied chapter of accidents that carries men into that net of precautions, expedients, prohibitions, and vindictive reprisals, the net of the law, they would have us believe there is a fatal necessity inherent in their being. Criminals are born, not made, they allege. ”

“ This account of the considerations which have regulated the punishment of crimes explains the severity with which 'criminal negligence' is in some cases punished, and that severity is justified by the account given of the true principle of criminal law, the principle, viz., that crime should be punished according to the importance of the right which it violates, and to the degree of terror which in a well-organised society needs to be associated with the crime in order to the protection of the right. ”

“ These instances of gross injustice and depravity in masters, are not many, but that they should occur, is sufficient to cause the aid of law to be called in, that the existence of them should be prevented. ”

“ Such an illegal examination, brutally conducted, covers the helpless and innocent with the awful shadow of fear fathered by the suspicion of cruel abuse, and the victims of such gross assault, in their loneliness, beyond all help, are forced to appear guilty of something when they are not. ”