Thus much for the general merits of punishment, considered as an instrument to be applied in the government of men. It is time that we should enquire into the apology which may be offered in its behalf, as a temporary expedient.
No introduction seemed more proper to this enquiry than such a review of the subject upon a comprehensive scale; that the reader might be inspired with a suitable repugnance against so pernicious a system, and prepared firmly to resist its admission, in all cases where its necessity cannot be clearly demonstrated.
The arguments in favour of punishment as a temporary expedient are obvious.
It may be alleged that 'however suitable an entire immunity in this respect may be to the nature of mind absolutely considered, it is impracticable with regard to men as we now find them. The human species is at present infected with a thousand vices, the offspring of established injustice.
They are full of factitious appetites and perverse habits: headstrong in evil, inveterate in selfishness, without sympathy and forbearance for the welfare of others. In time they may become accommodated to the lessons of reason; but at present they would be found deaf to her mandates, and eager to commit every species of injustice.'
One of the remarks that most irresistibly suggest themselves upon this statement is that punishment has no proper tendency to prepare men for a state in which punishment shall cease. It were idle to expect that force should begin to do that which it is the office of truth to finish, should fit men, by severity and violence, to enter with more favourable auspices into the schools of reason.
But, to omit this gross misrepresentation in behalf of the supposed utility of punishment, it is of importance, in the first place, to observe that there is a complete and unanswerable remedy to those evils, the cure of which has hitherto been sought in punishment, that is within the reach of every community, whenever they shall be persuaded to adopt it. There is a state of society, the outline of which has been already sketched,Chapter hat, by the mere simplicity of its structure, would lead to the extermination of offence: a state in which temptation would be almost unknown, truth brought down to the level of all apprehensions, and vice sufficiently checked, by the general discountenance, and sober condemnation of every spectator.