one another, and to produce sometimes perhaps a decision founded half upon law and half upon justice. This may indeed occasionally be in some sort imposed upon him—at least he would feel a hesitation, a sort of repugnance to deliver a decision which was absolutely contrary to the rule of law. But this inconvenience is in a great degree accidental and factitious. As the principles of equity assumed their proper dominance in the adjustment of disputes, fixed laws would proportionably decline in influence and in their practical hold upon the minds of men. Their judgments would gradually become emancipated from this species of shackle ;-they would rise, disencumbered of arbitrary maxims, and decide according to those maxims of moral equity for the dictates of which no man has for to seek. The whole system tends to the invigoration and elevation of the mind. A man who is conscious of an absolute authority to decide-of an uncontrolled discretionary power, in a question perhaps of important interests, is animated by the moral eminence of his station to exert a vigorous and honourable endeavour to award sound justice. You are not to expect in such a man, what we find in arbitrary judges, that his very absoluteness will make him capricious and tyrannical; for the moment he has pronounced his decision, a calamity, if that decision have been unjust, awaits him ;-the reprobation of his neighbours, of his friends, and of the public. The exercise of his discretion is bound to the side of uprightness, though not by ordinary pains and penalties, yet by virtual pains and penalties, which to such men as are chosen for arbitrators are amongst the most powerful that can be applied.

One thing is indispensable to an extended system of arbitration, that the civil magistrate should sanction its decisions by a willing enforcement of the verdict. It is usual for disputants who refer to arbitrators to sign an agreement to abide by their decision; and this agreement may by some simple process of law be enforced. The law does indeed now sanction arbitrations; but then it is in a formal and expensive way. A deed is drawn up, and a stamp must be affixed, and a solicitor must be employed; so that at last the disagreeing parties do but partly reap the benefits of arbitration. This should be remedied. The reader will observe that I say law is wanted to enforce the decisions of equity. No doubt it is. It is wanted for the same reason as government is wanted, to exert power, which power, it is evident, must be exercised by the government. But if any critic should say that this acknowledges the insufficiency of equity, I answer, that we are speaking of unconnected things. The business of equity is to decide between right and wrong, and to say what is right-with which the infliction of penalties or the enforcement of decisions has no concern. A court and jury say that a man shall be sent for six months to a prison, but it forms no part of their business to execute the sentence.

With respect to the applicability of courts of equity to criminal trials, I see nothing that necessarily prevents it. Men who can judge respecting matters of property and personal rights, can judge respecting questions of innocence and guilt. In one view, indeed, they can judge more easily; because moral desert is determinable upon more simple and obvious principles than claims of property. Many who would feel much difficulty in deciding involved disputes about money or land, would feel none in determining, with sufficient accuracy, the degree of ar offender's guilt.

It being manifest, then, that offences against the peace of society may be as properly referred to courts of equity as questions of right-what should

be the constitution of such a court? But here the reader is to remember, that the objection is not merely or principally to the constitution of present courts, but to the principles of fixed law upon which justice is administered. So that, if principles of equity were substituted, the constitution of the court would become a secondary concern; and courts consisting of a jury and a judge might not be bad, though they were not the best. If half a dozen intelligent and upright men could be appointed to examine the truth of charges against a prisoner, and if they were allowed to award a just punishment, I should have little fear, after making allowances for the frailties of humanity, that their penalties would generally be just ;-at any rate, that they would be more accordant with justice than penalties which are regulated by fixed law. The difficulty is in procuring the arbitrators, a difficulty greater than that which obtains in cases of private right. For in the first place offenders against the peace of society generally excite the feelings of the public, and especially of the neighbourhood, against them. Men too often prejudge cases, and the prisoner is frequently condemned in the public mind before any evidence has been brought before a jury. This indicates a difficulty in selecting impartial men. then, in the case of arbitrations, each party chooses one or more of the judges. Shall the same privilege be allowed to persons charged with crime? If it were, would they not select persons who would frustrate all the endeavours to administer justice? Besides, where is the conflicting party who shall be equally interested in appointing arbitrators of opposite dispositions? And if both did appoint such, what is the hope of a temperate and rational decision? Again, there are offences which are regarded with peculiar severity by particular classes of men. court composed of country gentlemen, would hardly award a fair verdict against a poacher.

And

A

Now,

These considerations and others indicate difficulty; and perhaps the difficulty cannot better be avoided than by a court selected by chance. In the selection of juries there have recently been introduced improvements. Still, if equity rather than law is to be regarded, something more is needed. though a jury be ignorant, the judge is learned; and a learned judge is indispensable where law is to be applied. But if simple justice be the object, such a judge becomes comparatively little requisite; yet when we have dispensed with the intelligence of the judge, we must provide for greater intelligence in the jury. A jury from the lower classes of the community may serve with tolerable sufficiency the purposes of justice in the present system; but if they were converted from jurymen into arbitrators, much more of intelligence, and, we may add, much more of elevation of character, is required. To endeavour to obtain this intelligence and uprightness by a mode of chance selection, must always be very uncertain of success. If those who were eligible for: this species of jury, were obliged to possess a certain qualification in point of property: if, of those who were thus eligible, a competent number were selected by ballot, and if the prisoner and the prosecutor were allowed a large right of challenge, perhaps every thing would be done which is in the power of man.

The number of arbitrators who form a court of equity should always be small. Large numbers effect less good by accumulating wisdom, than harm by putting off patient investigation to one another, and by" dividing the shame" of a partial decision.

The members of such courts, though capable of deciding with competent propriety on questions of right and wrong when facts are laid before them,

may be incapable, from want of habit, of eliciting those facts from reluctant or partial witnesses. Now, I perceive no reason why, both in criminal and civil courts, a person could not be employed, whose profession it was to elicit the truth. Is he to be a pleader or an advocate? No. The very name is sufficient to discredit the office in the view of pure morality. One professional man only should be employed. That one should be employed by neither party separately, but by both, or by the state. It should be his simple and sole business to elicit the truth, and to elicit it from the witnesses of both sides. Securities against corruption in this man, are obviously as easy as in arbitrators themselves. The judges of England evince, in general, an admirable example of impartiality; and as to corruptness, it is almost unknown. What reason is there for questioning that officers such as we speak of, may not be incorrupt and impartial too? If handsome remuneration be necessary to secure them from undue influence and to maintain the dignity of their office, let them by all means have it. Even in a present court of law or justice-suppose the examination of witnesses was taken from barristers and conducted by the judge, does not every man perceive that the truth might be elicited by one interrogator of the witnesses of both parties? And does not every one perceive that such an interrogator would elicit it in a far more upright and manly way, than is now the case? Pleading is a thing which, in the administration of justice, ought not to be so much as named.

Bearing along in our minds, then, the inconveniences and the evils of Fixed Laws-let us suppose that a circuit was taken, and that courts were held from which the application of fixed law was, so far as is practicable, excluded. Suppose these courts to consist of three or five or seven men, selected according to the utmost skill of precautionary measures, for their intelligence and uprightness, and of one publicly authorized and dignified person, whose office it should be to assist the court in the discovery of the truth. Suppose that, when the facts of the case, and as far as possible the motives and intentions of the parties, were laid open, these three, or five, or seven men, pronounced a decision as accordant as they could do with the immutable principles of right and wrong, and excluding almost all reference to fixed laws, and precedents, and technicalities ;-is it not probable, is it not reasonable, to expect that the purposes of justice would be more effectually answered than they are at present? And even if justice was not better administered, would not such a system exclude various existing evils connected with legal institutions, evils so great as to be real calamities to the state?

Perhaps it is needless to remark, that all courts of equity which are recognized by the state should be public. Individuals who refer their disputes to private arbitrators, may have them privately adjusted if they please. But publicity is a powerful means of securing that impartiality which it is the first object in the administration of justice to secure.

There is one advantage, collateral indeed to the administration of equity, but not therefore the less considerable, that it would have a strong tendency to diffuse sound ideas of justice in the public mind. As it is, it may unhappily be affirmed that courts of judicature spread an habitual confusion of ideas upon the subject; and, what is worse, very frequently inculcate that as just which is really the contrary. Our notions of a court of judicature are, or they ought to be, that it is a place sacred to justice. But when, superinduced upon this notion, it is the fact, that by very many of its decisions justice is put into the background; that law is elevated into

supremacy; that the technicalities of forms, and the finesse of pleaders, triumph over the decisions of rectitude in the mind-the effect cannot be otherwise than bad. It cannot do otherwise than confound, in the public mind, notions of good and evil, and teach them to think that every thing is virtuous which courts of justice sanction. If, instead of this, the public were habituated to a constant appeal to equity, and to a constant conformity to its dictates, the effect would be opposite, and therefore good. Justice would stand prominently forward to the public view as the object of reverence and regard. The distinctions between equity and injustice would become, by habit, broad and defined. Instead of confounding the public ideas of morality, a court of judicature would teach, very powerfully teach, discrimination. A court, seriously endeavouring to discover the decision of justice, and uprightly awarding it between man and man, would be a spectacle of which the moral influence could not be lost upon the people

In thus recommending the application of pure moral principles in the administration of justice, the writer does not presume to define how far the present condition of human virtue may capacitate legislature to exchange fixed rules of decision for the impartial judgments of upright men. That it may be done to a much greater extent than it is now done, he entertains no doubt. A legislature might perhaps begin with that pernicious species of arbitrary rules which consists of technicalities and forms. To deny justice to a man because he has not claimed it in a specific form of words, or because some legal inaccuracy has been committed in the proceedings, must always disapprove itself to the plain judgments of mankind. Begin then with the most palpable and useless rules.

Whatever can be dispensed with, it is

a sacred duty to abolish, and every act of judicious abolition will facilitate the abolition of others :-it will prepare the public mind for the contemplation of purer institutions, and gradually enable it to adopt those institutions in the national practice.

As to the particular modes of securing the administration of simple justice, the writer would say, that those which he has suggested, he has suggested with deference. His business is rather with the principles of sound political institutions, than with the form and mode of applying them to practice. Other and better means than he has suggested are probably to be found. The candid reader will acknowledge, that in advocating institutions so different from those which actually obtain, the political moralist is under peculiar difficulties and disadvantages. The best machinery of social institutions is discovered rather from experience than from reasoning, and upon this machinery, in the present instance, experience has thrown little light.

Here, as in some other parts of this work, the reader will observe that alterations are proposed and improvements sug. gested which have been actually adopted since these Essays were written. Our courts, and also the legislature, have lately paid some attention to the modes in which public justice is administered. As yet, the alterations which have been made are chiefly confined to the criminal laws: but our judges are now beginning to exert the discretionary power which is vested in them, in preventing the course of justice from being, so frequently as it heretofore has been, intercepted by technicalities and verbal inaccuracy. Of this the public had lately an instance in the cause of Gulley v. the Bishop of Exeter. Parliamentary Commission has been appointed, and is now sitting, whose object it is to devise improvements in the prac tice of our courts of judicature.-ED.

A

CHAPTER XI.

OF THE PROPER SUBJECTS OF PENAL ANIMADVERSION.

Crimes regarded by the Civil and the Moral Law-Created offences-Seduction-Duelling-Insolvents-Criminal debt. ors Gradations of guilt in insolvency-Libels: mode of punishing-Effects of the laws respecting libels-Effects of public censure-Libels on the Government-Advantages of a free statement of the truth-Freedom of the Press.

THE man who compares the actions which are denounced as wrong in the Moral Law, with those which are punished by civil government, will find that they are far from an accordance. The Moral Law declares many actions to be wicked, which human institutions do not punish; and there are some that these institutions punish, of which there is no direct reprehension in the communicated Will of God.

It is not easy to refer all these incongruities to the application of any one general principle of discrimination. You cannot say that the magistrate adverts only to those crimes which are pernicious to society, for all crimes are pernicious. Nor can you say that he selects the greatest for his animadversion, because he punishes many of which the guilt is incomparably less than others which he passes by. Nor again, can you say that he punishes only those in which there is an injured and complaining party; for he punishes some of which all the parties were voluntary agents. Lastly--and what seems at first view very extraordinary-we find that civil governments create offences which, simply regarded, have no existence in the view of morality, and punish them with severity, whilst others, unquestionably immoral, pass with impunity.

The practical rule which appears to be regarded in the selection of offences for punishment, is founded upon the existing circumstances of the community.

Offences against which, from any cause, the public disapprobation is strongly directed, are usually visited by the arm of the civil magistrate, partly because that disapprobation implies that the offence disturbs the order of society, and partly because, in the case of such offences, penal animadversion is efficient and vigorous by the ready co-operation of the public. Thus it is with almost all offences against property, and with those which personally injure or alarm us. Every man is desirous of prosecuting a housebreaker, for he feels that his own house may be robbed. Every man is desirous of punishing an assault or a threatening letter, because he considers that his peace may be disturbed by the one, and his person injured by the other. This general and strong reprobation makes detection comparatively easy, and punishment efficient.

Examples of the contrary kind are to be found in the crimes of drunkenness, of profane swearing, of fornication, of duelling. Not that we have any reason to expect, that at the bar of heaven some of these crimes will be at all less obnoxious to punishment than the former, but because, from whatever reason, the public very negligently co-operate with law in punishing them, and manifest little desire to see its penalties inflicted. An habitual drunkard does much more harm to his family and to the world, than he who picks my pocket of a guinea; yet we raise a hue and cry after the thief, and suffer the other to become drunk every day. So it is with duelling and fornication. The public know very well that these things are wrong, and pernicious to the general welfare; but scarcely any one will prosecute those who commit them. The magistrate

Another rule which appears to be practically, though not theoretically, adopted is, to punish those offences of which there is a natural prosecutor. Thus it is with every kind of robbery and violence. Some one especially is aggrieved: the sense of grievances induces a ready prosecution, and whatever is readily prosecuted by the people will generally be denounced in the laws of the state. The opposite fact is exhibited in the case of many offences against the public, such as smuggling, and generally in the case of all frauds upon the revenue. No individual is especially aggrieved, (unless in the case of regular dealers whose business is injured by illicit trading,) and the consequence is, either that numberless frauds of this kind are suffered to pass with impunity, or that the government is obliged to employ persons to detect the offenders, and to prosecute them itself. There are some crimes which seem in this respect of an intermediate sort; where there is a natural prosecutor, and yet where that prosecutor is not the most aggrieved person. This is instanced in the case of seduction. The father prosecutes, but he does not sustain one half the injury that is suffered by the daughter. There are obvious reasons why the most injured party should be at best an inefficient prosecutor; and the result is consonant— that this offence is frequently not punished at all, or, as is the case in our own country, it is punished very slightly-so slightly, that in no case does the person of the offender suffer. This lenity does not arise from the venialness of this crime, or that of adultery. They are amongst the most enormous that can be perpetrated by man. Of the less flagitious of the two, it has been affirmed "that not one half of the crimes for which men suffer death by the laws of England are so flagitious as this." * This enormity is distinctly asserted in both the Old Testament and the New: in the first, adultery was punished with death; in the second, both this and fornication, which is less criminal than seduction, is repeatedly assorted with the greatest of crimes, and alike threatened with the tremendous punishments of religion.

Such considerations lead the enquirer to expect that the offences which are denounced in a statute book will bear some relation to the state of virtue in the people. The more virtuous the people are, the greater will be the number of crimes which can be efficiently visited by the arm of power. Thus, during some part of the seventeenth century, that is, during the interregnum, adultery was punished with death; and it may be remarked, without paying a compli ment to the religion or politics of those times, that the actual practice of morality was then, amongst a large proportion of the nation, at a higher standard than it is now. No society exists without some species of penal justice-from that of a gang of thieves to that of a select and pious Christian community. The thieves will punish some crimes, but they will be few. The virtuous community will punish, or, which for our present purpose is the same thing, animadvert upon, very many. In a well-ordered family many things are held to be offences, and are noticed as such by the parent, which in a vicious family pass unregarded.

When therefore we contemplate the unnumbered offences against morality which the magistrate does not attempt to discourage, we may take comfort from hoping that, as the virtue of mankind increases, it

• Paley Mor. and Pol. Phil. b. 3, p. 3.-Seduction.

may increase in more than a simple ratio. As the public become prepared for it, governments will lend their aid; and thus they who have now little restraint from some crimes but that which exists in their own minds, may hereafter be deterred by the fear of human penalty. And this induces the observation, that to throw obstacles in the way of increasing the subjects of penal animadversion, is both impolitic and wrong. This, unhappily, has frequently been done in our own country. Some public writers (writers not of great eminence to be sure) have taken great pains to ridicule legislation respecting cruelty to animals-and the endeavours on the part of well-disposed men to enforce almost obsolete statutes against some other common crimes. There are, surely, a sufficiency of obstacles to the extension of the subjects of penal legislation, without needlessly adding more. Besides, these men directly encourage the crimes. To sneer at him who prosecutes a ferocious man for cruelty to an animal, is to encourage cruelty. When a man is brought before a magistrate for profaneness-to joke about how the culprit swore in the court, is to teach men to be profane.

That which we have called, in the commencement of this chapter, the creation of offences, demands peculiar solicitude on the part of a government. By a created offence, I mean an act which, but for the law, would be no offence at all. Of this class are some offences against the game laws. He who on another continent was accustomed without blame to knock down hares and pheasants as he found occasion, would feel the force of this creation of offences when, on doing the same thing in England, he was carried to a jail. The most fruitful cause of these factitious offences is in extensive taxation. When a new tax is imposed, the legislature endeavours to secure its due payment by requiring or forbidding certain acts. These acts, which antecedently were indifferent, become criminal by the legislative prohibition, or obligatory by the legislative command; and noncompliance is therefore punished as an offence by the civil power. There is no more harm in a man's buying brandy in France and bringing it to England, than in buying a horse of his neighbour. The law lays a duty upon brandy, prohibits any man from bringing it to the country except through a customhouse, and treats as criminals those who do.

Now we do not affirm that those who commit these created offences do not absolutely offend against morality. They do offend; for in general every evasion or violation of the laws of the state is an immoral act. But this does not affect the truth, that such offences should be as few as they can be. The reasons are, first, that they are encroachments upon civil liberty, and secondly, which is our present concern-that they are pernicious to the public. Men perceive the distinction between moral crimes and legal crimes, without perhaps ever having enquired into its foundation. And they act upon this perception. He who has been convicted of killing hares, or evading taxes, or smuggling lace, is commonly willing to tell you of his exploits. He who has been convicted of stealing from his neighbour, hangs down his head for shame. The sanctions of law ought to approve themselves to the common judgments of mankind. Whatever the state denounces, that the public ought to feel to be criminal, and to be willing to suppress. The penalties of the law ought to be

I have somewhere met with a book which contended that to commit these created offences was no breach of morality. This, however, is not true, because the obligation to obey civil government, in its innocent enactments, is clearly stated in the Moral Law.

accompanied in men's minds by the sanction of morality. They should feel that to be punished by a magistrate was tantamount to being a bad man. When, instead of this, there is an intricate admixture-when we see some things which are, simply regarded, innocent, visited by the same punishment as others that all men feel to be wicked, men are likely to feel a diminished respect for penal law itself. They learn to regard the requisitions of law as having little countenance from rectitude; and think that to violate them, though it may be dangerous, is not wrong. It does not approve itself, as a

whole, to the public judgment; and there are many | perhaps who feel, on this account, a diminished respect for penal institutions, without being able to assign the reason.

In the extension of this political and moral evil the greatest of all agents is war. With respect to the creation of offences, it stands sui generis, and converts a greater number of indifferent actions into punishable ones, than all other agents united. War produces the extensive taxation of which we speak; but the practical system has offences peculiar to itself offences which the Moral Law of our Creator never denounced, but which the system of war visits with tremendous punishments. Adam Smith adverts to this deplorable circumstance. He says, that the punishment of death to a sentinel who falls asleep upon his watch, "how necessary soever, always appears to be excessively severe. The natural atrocity of the crime seems to be so little, and the punishment so great, that it is with great difficulty that our heart can reconcile itself to it."* Nor will the heart, nor ought the heart, ever to be reconciled to it. It is, I know, perfectly easy to urge arguments in its favour from expediency and the like; but urge these arguments as you may, the uninitiated or unhardened heart will never be convinced; and it is vain to tell us that that is right, which the immutable dictates in our minds pronounce to be wrong. There are, indeed, few spectacles more calculated to sicken the heart and to make it turn in disgust away from the monstrousness of human institutions, than a contemplation of martial law-a code which not only creates a multiplicity of offences that were never prohibited by our merciful Parent, but which visits the commission of those offences with inflictions that ought not to be so much as named amongst a Christian people.

Whilst then the philanthropist hopes that some of those intrinsically criminal actions to which human penalties are not attached, will one day become the object of their animadversion, he hopes that this other class, which are not intrinsically vicious, will gradually be expunged from amongst penal laws. Both the additions to, and the deductions from, the system which morality dictates, are the result of the impure or corrupt condition of society.

Meantime some approaches to a juster standard to regulate penal animadversion may be made, by transferring, in our own country, some offences from the civil to the criminal courts. An instance exists in the crime of seduction and its affinities. This crime, whether we regard it simply or in its consequences, or in the deliberation with which it is committed, is, as we have just seen, excessively flagitious. How then does it happen that its perpetration is regarded as a matter for the cognizance only of legal courts, and for the punishment only of a pecuniary fine? What should we say to that mode of justice which allowed the ruffian who assaults your person to escape by paying money? Yet even a severe assault does not approach, in enormity, to the crime

Theory of Moral Sentiments.

"The

of which we speak. I would punish seducers in their I would send them to prison like other persons. malefactors; and oblige them to labour, or subject them to that system of prison discipline which might give hope (if any thing could give hope) of reformation. Alas! if there is no reason for not acting thus, there is a motive. That class of society to whom the framing of laws is entrusted, regard the crime with but very ambiguous detestation. law of honour," it is said, "applauds the address of a successful intrigue." How should they who value themselves upon being the subjects of the law of honour, wish to consign a man to prison for that which the law of honour applauds? I doubt not that, if seduction were confined to low life, the legis. lature would quickly send seducers to the criminal courts. Would they were sent ! The very idea of the punishment would, amongst gay men in the superior walks of life, often prevent the crime. To be seized by police! To be carried to a jail! To be brought to the bar with thieves and murderers ! To be carried back To be sentenced by the court! to labour in a prison, or to be embarked for New South Wales!—The idea, I say, of this would go far to prevent the perpetration of this abandoned crime. Duelling is another of the crimes which should be It is indeed proseprosecuted in criminal courts. cuted there if any where; but it is seldom prosecuted at all. The ultimate cause is easily discovered: -the crime is sanctioned by the law of honour. Like the preceding, if it were practised only by the poor, it would quickly be visited by the arm of the law. Of the probability of this, we have an illustration in the case of boxing. One or more of the judges have recently declared, that if a man is convicted of having caused another's death in a boxing match, they will inflict the sentence which the law denounces upon manslaughter. The law of honour has no voice here; and here the voice of reason and common sense is regarded. Make boxing-matches, like duelling, a part of the system of the law of honour, and we shall hear very little about the punishment of manslaughter. The reader saw, in the last Essay, what an influence the law of honour had in a case of duelling on the mind, and on the charge of a judge on the Scotch bench.-These things suggest sorrowful reflections!

Much and very contradictory declamation is often employed respecting the treatment which is due to those who become insolvent. By our present law, the debtor may be arrested, that is, he may be im imprisoned; on which account it may be allowable to range the discussion under the head of penal law. Imprisonment for debt is, in effect, a penalty, although it be not inflicted by a court of justice.

One class of persons declaims against the oppression of immuring men in a prison who have committed no crime; against the cruelty of the relentless creditor who, when misfortune has overtaken a fellow creature, adds to his miseries the terrors of the law, and deprives him of the opportunity of exertion, and his family of the means of support :-and all this, it is said, is done without obtaining any other advantage to the persecutor than the gratification of his resentment or malignity. Another class expatiates upon the unprincipled fraud which is committed upon industrious traders by spendthrifts or villains-upon the hardship of leaving honest men at the mercy of every idle or profligate person who has address enough to obtain credit, and upon the absurdity of

• In France, it is said, and in America, duelling is descending to the inferior classes of society. If this should become general, we may soon reckon upon an efficient diminution of the practice. The rich will forbear it on account of its vul

ishment.

Supposing, again, it appeared that the debtor could not pay, and that his insolvency involved no fault: -let him be regarded as a man overtaken by misfortune, as a man whom it would be oppressive and wrong to punish, and who therefore should be set at large. His property of course would be secured.

Discrimination of this kind, whatever might be the mode of its exercise, appears to be a sine qua non of the administration of justice. It is exceedingly obvious, that when actions of which the external consequences may be the same, result some from innocent and some from criminal causes, they should not receive the same treatment at the hand of the law-just as he who accidentally occasions a man's death should not receive the same treatment as he who commits murder. Now this manifest requisite of justice is in no other way attainable in the case of insolvency, than by investigating the conduct of every individual man.

When the criminal debtors are committed like other criminals to prison, they should be regarded as public offenders, and as such become amenable to Courts of a simple construcpenal animadversion. tion might perhaps be erected for this class of offenders, which might possess the power of awarding such punishments for the various degrees of guilt as the law thought fit to prescribe. Nor does there appear any reason for deviating materially from those species of punishment which are properly em

only by the poor.

occasioned by guilt in endless gradations, and some