an obscure author on Criminal Jurisprudence might lie very quietly on the shelf, if he were to withhold his production until it was perfected to his wishes,

Those who are in the habit of treating political occurrences as nothing more than temporary irregularities to be provided for by the sagacity of the statesman, will, perhaps, regard my method of handling the subject as nothing more than spurious and abstruse speculation; and I cannot forbear the temptation, even at the threshold, to disarm these reasoners, by premising, that I have the happiness to follow in the steps of Lord Kaimes, whose History of the Criminal Law, in his Tracts, is founded on the same principles which I have adopted; and that those principles are most amply unfolded and established by that eminent theologian and moralist Bishop Butler, in his Sermons and his

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Analogy." But by preferring the train of argument here employed, I hope I shall not be thought to esteem the practical observations

of the writers by whom I am preceded less than they do themselves; but almost every author has very cursorily passed over the abstract part of the question, and has rested almost entirely on its practical consequences; and practice alone will never enable us to determine a political truth.

The outline of my argument is briefly this. We must endeavour to discover the general laws by which the affairs of mankind are naturally regulated without any interference on the part of human legislatures; and must make ourselves acquainted with the orderly succession of events, to which all things, both in the physical and moral world, have a tendency, and the means which nature has adopted to rectify the discrepances which are incidental to this constitution of things. Having established this first point, I endeavour to point out where we must discover those general laws which are connected with Criminal Jurisprudence. The instinctive dispositions and inalienable rights of our

nature, which are intended to protect us from aggression, afford us the clue; and, in taking these as our guide, I contend that we fall in with the practical tendency of law as well as with the abstract reason of it; and that we are not lost in the remote and vague speculation to which those who treat the law as purely conventional are obliged to resort. The end proposed by penal jurisprudence I have stated, as others have done, to be the prevention of crimes; but a broad distinction is drawn between crimes when treated abstractedly or as offences against the Deity, and crimes treated as injuries done to the members of society. It is in the latter view alone that the municipal law has to do with them. I then proceed to examine the qualities and properties of offences by which we are best enabled to proportion punishment or penalties to them; and this most intricate part of our discussion brings us to this conclusion, which I can regard only as an approximation to truth, that the least exceptionable criterion is the moral character of

Nevertheless by

the action to be punished. adopting this as our guide, care must be taken, that punishment be not dealt out retributively, or with relation to injury and crime in the abstract; and that the intimidation of the wicked be not the primary object. What is added by way of example must be employed incidentally and not to encrease the measure of corporeal suffering. The example must arise out of the manner of executing the sentence; and not, as is too frequently the case, out of the subject-matter. For the sake of perspicuity I regret that I have not repeated this distinction at p. 147, 219, and 253. Having determined that the first object of the law is to restrain the criminal, and then to reform him and deter others, I proceed to examine the modes of punishment best adapted to answer these desirable ends, and am led to give the preference to imprisonment, with its various modifications, for all offences short of the most flagrant. The infliction of death I determine can be justified only on account of

those aggravated crimes which dissever the elements of a healthful society; and is to be regarded not altogether as a punishment, but as the only means of defence against a certain description of miscreants.

My next object is to shew the distinction between human and divine law, and how the former must be made to correspond with the latter. This leads me on to discuss the point how far written law is capable of being made an instrument to regulate the disorders of society; and though this is a question of infinite difficulty, I hope it is treated in such a way as to deserve the attention of politicians. The reader however, who expects to arrive at definitive conclusions on these intricate subjects will be disappointed. They admit of no new discoveries; and at present we must probably rest contented with elucidating their difficulties, and drawing a more definite line, than has hitherto existed, about the means we employ and the ends we aim at,