The exercise of rational resentment is by no means incompatible with good-will towards the offender. This is confirmed by what we daily observe occurring between parents and children, and between other relations and friends. Indeed if the passion be justifiable in proportion as it is excited. against injury that is wilful, and the object of inflicting pain, is not the gratification of vindictive feeling, but solely as a means of defence, there is nothing that forbids the return of complacency and kindness; especially if the fear of injury be removed, and the sufferer manifest a sense of his fault and is penitent. The gratification of resentment, under all its aspects, is so intimately directed towards the occasion of it, that men are almost always disarmed when the offender expresses sorrow for his conduct. When the feeling survives this contrition, it assumes rather the character of malignity, which everybody abhors.

It may be urged by way of moderating the excesses of resentment, and keeping it within the limits which reason points out, that we should consider the motives of the of fender, not only without prejudice, but even with charity. If we have any personal inte

rest in the case, or our feelings have been greatly roused, we may be assured, that we are more likely to err on the side of severity than of lenity. This should moderate our deliberate anger. Then again, we should do well to think of the various alleviations, some of which actually attend, and others may attend, the injury we would avenge. Scarcely any act is so depraved but what fallible mortals, like ourselves, may find some mitigation without being guilty of misprision of vice. The interrogatory of the pious Boerhaave might very seasonably occur to the recollection on such occasions, "Who knows whether this man is not less culpable than me?" Ignorance, bad education, indigence, the force of example, strong temptation, and even the very constitution of the temper, may contribute to lessen the moral depravity, and consequently the injury, or evil, which we determined before was the only fit object of resentment. And as some men may have worse organs of sense than others, so with regard to the mind, both the capacity of the understanding, and the means of improving it have oftentimes no dependence on mens' wills; "And therefore," says Dr. Samuel Clarke, “no man is answerable for having a larger or smaller capacity, or for having more

or fewer means of information: But he is accountable for the use of that degree of understanding, and for the use or abuse of those means of knowledge, whatever they may be, which God has thought fit to afford him. A man may shut his eyes, and may chuse darkness rather than light: Or he may through wilfulness or passion, chuse to follow a false light instead of a true one; an imaginary spectre instead of a reality: Or he may put out his eyes and bring himself under a sort of necessity of blindly following some Guide, who (as it happens) may equally lead him in the right way or the wrong one. A man may by negligence, or by wilfulness, or by love of Vice, or by any customary and habitual ill practice, pervert or blind his own understanding. He may by rejecting the means of discovering the truth, through his own fault, and not through want of capacity, form to himself ill principles instead of good

ones.

In this extract, (and my limits oblige me to terminate it too soon) we have a just criterion for estimating men's actions; and surely, if, on occasions of resentment, we were ac

* Clarke's Sermon "On the Nature of Human Actions."

customed to regard the nature and equity of things, we should be much more disposed to forgive, as far as we ourselves were concerned, than severely to retaliate. It must however be remarked, that this christian doctrine of forgiving enemies by no means affords a reason why an injured person should not stand on the defensive, or that a delinquent should not be restrained from doing evil. It only takes away the bitterness, that is apt to be mingled with that restraint.

Here I am naturally led to make some observations on punishment, as connected with the passions whose nature we have been discussing. This point, and another referring to the extreme case of taking away life, have been reserved for this place, that the reader might be made acquainted beforehand with the least polemical part of the subject; which, it is hoped, has prepared his mind for entering upon questions, on which the public has been much agitated-perhaps too much so to enable it to come to an unprejudiced decision.

The term punishment, though of such constant occurrence, is not easily defined. Thus one author will speak of it as a debt incurred

by an injury, and to be paid by a certain quantity of suffering; Dr. Johnson explains it to be," any infliction or pain in vengeance of a crime." Adam Smith says,* "To reward is to recompense; to remunerate, to return good for good received. To punish, too, is to recompense, to remunerate, though in a different manner; it is to return evil for evil that has been done."-" Punishment is generally used to signify the voluntary infliction of evil upon a vicious being, not merely because the public advantage demands it, but because there is apprehended to be a certain fitness and propriety in the nature of things, that render suffering, abstractedly from the benefit to result, the suitable concomitant of vice."t

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Punir, dans le sens le plus général," says Bentham,"cést infliger un mal á un individu, avec une intention directe par rapport à ce mal, a raison de quelque acte qui paroît avoir été fait ou omis." He is driven, however, to revive an old word to express the precise idea he wishes to convey, and which he calls punition. His definition of vengeance, I apprehend, more nearly conveys, the sense in which punishment is usually employed. Blackstone felt the same.

Theory of Moral Sentiments, Vol. I. p. 146.- + Godwin's Political Justice, Vol. II. p. 689.- Theorie des Peines et des Recompenses, p. 2.