Punishable

“ If there is any opinion to which the man of uncultivated morals is attached, it is the belief in the necessary connection of punishment and guilt. Punishment is punishment, only where it is deserved. We pay the penalty, because we owe it, and for no other reason; and if punishment is inflicted for any other reason whatever, than because it is merited by wrong, it is a gross immorality, a crying injustice, an abominable crime, and not what it pretends to be. ”

“ To every crime, which from its nature must frequently remain unpunished, the punishment is an incentive. Such is the nature of the human mind, that difficulties, if not insurmountable, nor too great for our natural indolence, embellish the object, and spur us on to the pursuit. ”

“ But is the motive of punishment for retribution worthy of a moral person? If the proper aim of punishment were retributive, the returning of evil for evil in proportionate measure, how could the amount of punishment be determined in case of such offenses as perjury, deception, or treason? ”

“ You shall be punished, then, they say, 'since you dare to disapprove of our deed.' Unheard of arrogance, that some men glory in their crime, that others may not even sorrow over it without punishment! ”

“ Instances of punishment in visions, apprehensions, and inward wretchedness, while there was no outward infliction of penalty.
11. There is really no need that punishment be inflicted; guilt is in the consciousness of the guilty its own adequate punishment.
12. Objection is made by one of the interlocutors to the justice of punishing children or posterity for the guilt of fathers or ancestors, and he heaps up an incongruous collection of cases in which he mingles confusedly the action of the Divine Providence and that of human caprice or malignity. ”

“ We have got it firmly into our heads that punishment is a superior ordering of consequences. And as the law of cause and effect which we see operating in nature is the basis of our moral sense, we have fallen to the confused notion that punishment is the same. ”

“ We feel, indeed, grateful to those who absolve us from the punishment, though not from the crime; but we lay down this law for ourselves: if we all entertained the wishes of which we are accused, we will then make no distinction between the will and the deed: let us all be punished. ”

“ While I hope that not many of us are guilty of such flagrant abuse of our power as is described above, still I am certain that on many occasions we punish just as hastily, without giving a chance for explanation and with as little thought as to whether "the punishment fits the crime." ”

“ To one that hath committed Murther, if the Judge should only ordain a Fine, it were a madness to call this a punishment, and to repine at the sentence, rather than admire the clemency of the Judge. Thus, our offences being mortal, and deserving not only Death, but Damnation, if the goodness of God be content to traverse and pass them over with a loss, misfortune, or disease, what frensie were it to term this a punishment, rather than an extremity of mercy, and to groan under the rod of His Judgements, rather than admire the Scepter of His Mercies! ”

“ What is man, I argued, that I should not despoil him, if he possess that which I covet? What should deter me from taking his life, if he stand between me and that which I desire? Crime is a mere word,—a term for any act which certain men, for their mutual advantage, have agreed shall meet with punishment. ”

“ It may happen that punishment shall have been inflicted, where, according to the intention of the law itself, it ought not to have been inflicted: that is, where the sufferer is innocent of the offense. ”

“ If one had committed a crime so heinous that he was unfit to live, he was forthwith put beyond the power of doing mischief; but if the offence were of a less atrocious character, modes of punishment were usually resorted to which did not involve the necessity of supporting him at public charge—such, for instance, as whipping, cutting off the ears, slitting the nose, and like improvements of the human form divine. ”

“ But it is forgotten that if the person punished is supposed to be innocent, or even if there be any doubt of his guilt, the spectator will reflect that his own danger, whatever it may be, is not contingent on his guiltiness, but threatens him equally if he remains innocent, and how, therefore, is he deterred from guilt by the apprehension of such punishment? ”

“ Where it is inefficacious: including cases where the penal provision has not come before the offender's notice, where he is unaware of the consequences of his act, or where he is not a free agent. 3. Cases where it is unprofitable: that is, when the evil of the punishment exceeds the evil of the offense. (The evils of punishment, which have to be summed up and set against the good, are (1) coercion or restraint, (2) the uneasiness of apprehension, (3) the actual suffering, (4) the suffering caused to all those that are in sympathy with the person punished.) ”

“ In the alloting of punishment the age, former social status or mental qualities of the offender are rarely taken into account. There are no excuses, no explanations. Take the gravest crime of all—cowardice. ”

“ Punishment wears different shapes according to the point of view from which it is regarded, but, in the distinctively moral view, is reformatory. All punishment is retribution, but not in the sense that it is personal vengeance. ”

“ The end of punishment, therefore, is no other, than to prevent the criminal from doing further injury to society, and to prevent others from committing the like offence. Such punishments, therefore, and such a mode of inflicting them, ought to be chosen, as will make the strongest and most lasting impressions on the minds of others, with the least torment to the body of the criminal. ”

“ The Second Objection answered, that all have deserved punishment; in regard all have offended: That Men cannot judge who is more or less culpable. 'Tis God only that clearly discerns betwixt crimes, and therefore most justly punishes. Buut (say you) there are some people punished that are guiltless, and have no way deserved it: For this is your Second complaint or rather Calumny. Unadvised Youngman! Are there then any punished who have not deserved it? Where I beseech you are those innocent Nations to be found? ”

“ But because some count it rigorous, and that hereby men shall be liable to a double punishment, I will begin somwhat higher and speak of punishment. Which, as it is an evil, I esteem to be of two sorts, or rather two degrees only, a reprobat conscience in this life, and hell in the other world. ”

“ And here is another statement which seems not less wonderful, but on the premises assumed is equally necessary.'
'What is that?'
'The wicked are happier in undergoing punishment than if no penalty of justice chasten them. And I am not now meaning what might occur to anyone—that bad character is amended by retribution, and is brought into the right path by the terror of punishment, or that it serves as an example to warn others to avoid transgression ”

“ Punishment may be considered in the light of a vindictive retribution for sin—a penalty demanded by the eternal principles of justice as the natural and proper sequel and complement of the past act of transgression, with or without regard to any salutary effects that may result from it in respect to future acts. ”

“ For he or she could not be nostri juris, and that which was abominable to us might well be reasonable to him or her, and, indeed, a fulfilment of the law of his being. Punishment, therefore, could not be exemplary, since the person punished exemplified nothing to Mankind ”

“ When a punishment well fitted in its quality cannot exist in less than a certain quantity, it may be of use to employ it, although a little beyond the measure of the offense: such are the punishments of exile, expulsion from a society, dismissal from office. 11. This may be the case more particularly when the punishment is a moral lesson. 12. In adjusting the quantum, account is to be taken of the circumstances that render all punishment unprofitable. ”

“ Punishment is the denial of wrong by the assertion of right, and the wrong exists in the self, or will, of the criminal; his self is a wrongful self, and is realized in his person and possessions; he has asserted in them his wrongful will, the incarnate denial of right ”

“ That the Same Punishment is Not to Be Inflicted for Every Offence, But Different Punishments for Different Offenders.
XLVIII. Do not pass the same sentence for every sin, but one suitable to each crime, distinguishing all the several sorts of offences with much prudence, the great from the little. Treat a wicked action after one manner, and a wicked word after another; a bare intention still otherwise. So also in the case of a contumely or suspicion. And some thou shalt curb by threatenings alone; some thou shalt punish with fines to the poor; some thou shalt mortify with fastings ”

“ Punishment by the blow or the immediate sentence will be futile. The offender must know he has trespassed in a realm beyond your administration and rule; he has done more than commit an offense against you. ”

“ No excellency will exempt a sinner from punishment. If the angels, who excel us vastly in strength and knowledge, violate the law of God, the sentence which that law awards shall be executed upon them, and that without mercy or mitigation, for God did not spare them. Hence observe, 2. By how much the more excellent the offender, by so much the more severe the punishment. These angels, who had the advantage of men as to the dignity of their nature, are immediately punished. ”

“ That punishment, therefore, will not be the most dreaded, nor, consequently, the most effectual, which is the greatest to the individual, unless it is at the same time thought so by others, and expresses the greatest general disapprobation of the crime. ”

“ We call that punishment cruel which visits us without our doing an injury which deserves it; and, as we never wished to be in the vicinity of the Nettles, nor, therefore, to injure them, our boyish fancy looked upon them as cruel. ”

“ It is to be lamented that, when the inhumanity of the members of this prolific family is brought before the majesty of the law for judgment--as is done every day of our lives--the punishment meted out is generally light and insignificant as compared to the offence. ”

“ The circumstances attending the crime for which these miserable beings have suffered, were of a nature so aggravated, as imperiously demanded the terrible punishment which has been inflicted upon them. ”

“ Man’s first sin of pride was followed by a triple punishment, consisting in a penalty, and two entailed defects, the penalty being bodily mortality, the defects carnal concupiscence and mental ignorance. ”

“ It could be, of course, when rewarding virtue, but punishment was usually pleasant only to the punished's victims or their survivors—never to the punished, seldom to observers, and only through God's Mercy was it satisfying to the punishers. ”

“ To aggravate the matter still more, we have made the punishment more infamous than the crime. A man may commit great crimes which indicate deep depravity; may escape the legal punishment thereof, by gold, by flight, by further crimes, and yet hold up his head unblushing and unrepentant amongst mankind. ”

“ But you may say that punishment follows misdoing so slowly that the moral order is virtually set aside. Do not believe it. ‘Qui fait du mal fait du malheur.’ The law is certain; but if punishment followed at once, and fully, on misdoing, mankind would be degraded. ”

“ When the specified conditions of just punishment are fulfilled, the person punished himself recognises it as just, as his due or desert, and it is so recognised by the onlooker who thinks himself into the situation. ”

“ Others, in their pretensions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment except in its utility for him who undergoes it, in its corrective virtue,—and that, too, is one of the possible effects of punishment, but not its foundation ”

“ Men would knock out one another's brains in order to get hung, and escape it. Men would cry aloud to the judge to hang them out of the way! It was the most terrible punishment known, for it was hopeless. ”

“ A child’s simple philosophy of punishment therefore is after all the correct one, when it tells you without hesitation that the reason a man is punished for a bad action is simply ‘because he deserves it.’ The notion of desert in punishment is based entirely on feelings of the justice of resentment. ”

“ The strong impulse of the passions, and the hope of impunity, still impel daring and wicked men to commit the most detestable and atrocious crimes.
The Genius of Punishment, therefore, with his dark countenance and fiery eye, must yet awhile longer frequent the haunts of the children of men. ”

“ Punishment is the Inspirer of Terror; Punishment is the Defender from Calamity; Punishment is the Guardian of those that sleep; Punishment, with a black aspect and a red eye, tempts the guilty.—Halhed’s Gentoo Code, ch. ”

“ It is, then, of the greatest importance, that the punishment should succeed the crime as immediately as possible, if we intend, that, in the rude minds of the multitude, the seducing picture of the advantage arising from the crime, should instantly awake the attendant idea of punishment. ”

“ The quantity of pain produced by the punishment will, it is true, depend in a considerable degree upon circumstances distinct from the nature of the punishment itself: upon the condition which the offender is in, with respect to the circumstances by which a man's sensibility is liable to be influenced. ”

“ Your punishment is public, that all men may know that the guilty never escape, and that, if your heart be visited by the slightest degree of compunction for your numerous victims, you may this day, by the frank confession of the irresistible means by which you seduced them, exonerate your victims from the painful and ignominious end with which, through your influence they are now threatened. ”

“ But as we do not think it just to beg to be acquitted on account of the name, if we be convicted as evil-doers, so, on the other hand, if we be found to have committed no offence, either in the matter of thus naming ourselves, or of our conduct as citizens, it is your part very earnestly to guard against incurring just punishment, by unjustly punishing those who are not convicted. ”