The record-union., 1894-01-27
SHALL WE HAVE THE WHIPPING
POST2

There is renewed demand in certain
quarters for the setting up of the whip
ping-post in California. A committee of
the Illinois Legislature of 1891 answered
the objections that are this year being
raised anew to the treatment of State
prisoners with view to their reforma-
ton, rather than for the taking of ven
geance upon them.
That committee reasserted the truth
that the one great object of the criminal
law and its enforcement is the protection
of society, Now, if the advocates of the
renewed proposition can establish to the
conviction of reason that the use
of the lash upon the backs of con-
victed criminals, the punishment being
inflicted either in public or in privacy,
will afford'society greater protection and
will not augment the volume of the Grim
inal class, we will admit the case made
out for the whipping-post.
II. on the other hand, society is better
protected from the assault of the criminal
by working his reformation where that is
possible, and where impossible by per-
petually sequestering him in prison at
labor. then the advocates of cat-o'-nine
tails must abandon their position.
AS the Illinois committee well said,
"the law does not seek to inflict ven
geance upon the criminal, no matter
what may be the degree of his ill-desert:
there is no actual measure of guilt by
which to gauge the amount Of suffering
which ought in justice to be inflicted
upon the individual" As that commit
tee also well said, the infiiction of ven
geance for the sake of satisfying sense
of retributive justice, subserves no use
ful purpose which is not equally well
answered by purely protective measures.
But, as we have said a leading San
Francisco journal, followed by some of
those in the interior, advocate the estab-
lishment of the whipping-post for offend
ers of certain grades-pickp pockets, road
agents, footpads, garroters and others.
We are told that the whipping-post went
out of use because of the sentiment at
tacling to it in Its relation to slavery, but
that slavery being dead the sentimental
repugnance to the use of the lash does not
remain; that as the cat-o'-nine-tails is
feared by the offender more than impris-
onment and labor, therefore it's use is
more deterrent; that the whip, the stocks
and the pillory were in use by our fore
fathers, who were pioneers in defense of
human right and were pure minded and
merciful; that Delaware retains the whip
ping-post and that its use there has
proved its value as a corrective and de-
terrent, precisely as does the rod in the
hand of parental authority.
It is to be replied to all this that the
Puritans abandoned the lash, the stocks
and the pillory as they brosdened and be-
came tolerant and liberal, and such
abandonment was the natural result of
the fuller recognition of human rights.
That it is not in proof and never has been
that the lash works reformation. That
fear deters is not denied. but that the
whipping of men reforms them is not ca
pable of demonstration, nor is the hog-
ging of man by an official comparable
with the inflietion of punishment by
loving parent upon his wayward child.
The reformed man is, it is conceded by
all. less dangerous to society than he who
is restrained by fear OF bodily pain alone.
Deprivation of liberty, repression, disci-
Mine. teaching restraint of passion and
appetite and demonstration by imprlson-
ment that one can live without giving
rein to unholy desire and the passions,
are reformatory.
Society is to be protected from the GRIM
;nal classes in one of three ways-by
shooting down the assailant in the act OF
dafense of person or property; by deprlV-
inc the enemy of social order OF the
,ower to act or by lawfully executing tne
or,n,inal when his offense warrants 1t.
Faar of punishment by the lash does not
.naar to ever have deprived the offender
of the uower or disposition to violate the
law; it goes no further than to make him