The National Register.
London, England, 1819-02-07 00:00:00

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No. 574.—V0z.. XII.

rauTicAL Insql'lst 110 N.

ON OUR CkINIINIL LAW.

DR. PALEY lays down as his furdamental princi-
ple, that punishment is inflicted by human magistrates,
t: for the sake of retrithition, of so much pain for au
tr.t.ch guilt, but solely fur the sake of preventing the
rtietition of crimes. ' The fear,' says Pityley, lest
• :he escape of the criminal •huuld encourage him, or
• others by his example, to repeat the same crime, or
• to commit different crimes, is the sole consideration
• which authorises the infliction of punishment by
• human laws. Now, that, whatever it may be, which
is the cause and end of the punishment, ought tin-
' doubtedly to regulate the n.casure of its severity.
Upon these rrinciples this writer proceeds to account
for, and to justify, the disproportion of punishments,
in many nut:awes, to the moral turpitude of crimes ;
far the degree of punishment is not at all regulated by
this moral consideration. The mischief of the crime,
and the ease with which h may be committed rad con-
cealed, are the only two considerations which must I,s-
-guLtte the punishment. For these reasons, the stealing
of cloths from the centers or bleaching grounds, Lei bs:
stealing, and sheep stealing, subject the offenders to sen-
tence of death, in order that the increased terror of the
punishment may counteract the facility of the crime.
Bet in laying down these doctrines, Archdeacon Paley
does not take into his view of the subject, in what way
the moral feelings of naenkited are influenced'by say very
wide variations of this principla of human putlishnient
from the principles of divine or retributive' juetice.—
He says, in another place, that the sole objects of
p:atisbnient are the amendment of the criminal, or
example to others. In considering the wide infliction
of death by the law of England, we have nothing to
do with the former. of these objects. In investigating
the latter, we should renewer, thee by whatever mo-
tives of expediency legislators .may be influenced, in
assigning certain penalties to certain offeneee, the
people, who witness the execution of these laws, behold
them with feelings r.f approbation or disapprobation,
according to the priuciples of moral justice, Red not
of political expediency; and that, when one men is'
lunged fir an atrocious murder, and smelter by his s:de
for stealing a sheer, :he people will be shocked, aid
outraged by the :mete itenishrneet being exacted for
crimes so widely different in wilst of guilt. Wheteer
the people may he wroig in this, we will not now en-,
quire. We only state tile fact, which no one will deny.
But it follows from this fact, that that very example, •
which Dr. Paley has laid down as the object of isen-
guinary punishment, must be in a great measure
defeated, where the disproportion between the guilt
and the penalty are very great. The criminal becomes
an object of compassioa, instead of execration, and,
instead of a culprit, he appears as a martyr. The
moral feelings which so awfully enhance, the minds
of the apectittors, the weight, and consequently the
example of capital punishment, when inflicted for an
atrocious offence, are thrown into the opposite scale,
and produce the very opposite effect to that which is
intended. Legislators must not merely study political
expediency, the object of their laws; but also the
nature of the human heart, by operating on which their
laws are to attain that object. Now it is one feature
of the mind of men in general, that their sense of the
guilt of an offence is increased by the knowledge of the
punishment that is affixed to it, as long as that punish-
ment is not obviously out of proportion. Thus, murders
associated as it is with an infamous death, appears more
morally atrocious, than it otherwise woall ; but when
a glaring disproportion exits between the offence and
the penalty, title very feeling affects tae people in the
neposite direction. The sensibility of our common
Lata.c 13 shocked, aad re-acts (to use a Freut.h phrase,)