CRIMINAL DISCIPLINE.
" Tan treatment of our criminals," says Lord John Russell, " is a problem yet undecided. If he shall do justice to the breadth of that assertion, Lord John may be the first statesman to begin at the true beginning of the question—that is, if be treat it as one to be worked, theoretically and practically, as a "problem." Hitherto the sole reliance has been upon the most empirical experiments, " trying " this plan or that as each in turn failed ; attempting.to " amend particular `cults in a system which still needs to be vindicated as a whole. The system fails on the most critical occasions; and it is high time that we should inquire, not how it
may be patched up, but whether it is not altogether wrong. There are indeed strong grounds for thinking so.
Let us take for the present the case of capitalpunishment. -The infliction of the extreme penalty has had, in some probable instances, the effect of directly stimulating to the crimes which it was intended to repress. This result was brought about by no untoward chance, but must arise from something inherent in the practice. The operation of the law is as well known as it can possibly be: the execution of a criminal is performed with the utmost publicity ; large crowds collect to witness it ; and those crowds consist precisely of the class on whom the example is in- tended to act—a criminally-disposed population. For dilettanti who cannot attend, the newspapers have supplied circumstantial accounts ; and Madame Tussaud perpetuates the criminal deed which is punished in her cabinet of horrors. Yet so strong have been the doubts as to the salutary working of the display, that it has been gravely proposed to perform executions privately—to conceal the example But this utter failure tells us to look back—to ask of ourselves whether we have ever fulfilled the preliminary duty of inquiry : have we ever ascertained how far we knew what it was we pro- posed to do—what we were to act upon—what was the nature of the means adopted—what was the way in which it acted ? Strange as it may seem, there is no satisfactory answer to these questions. We have presumed the answers. Yes, with mon- strous presumption, where life and death were at stake, we have assumed the fitness of capital punishment. We have undertaken the office of fatal retribution—one almost ex vi termini improper for erring humanity—without so much as making certain that it was either necessary or even fitted to its professed object. If not necessary, then is the killing of men by strangulation a miserable surplusage; if unfitted, then do we shed blood without even the excuse of incidentally checking crime : we follow up murder with bloodshed, in such a manner as to promote future murder.
Without assuming any ultimate conclusions, we may surely assert that these facts demand a diligent effort to make up arrears in the duty of inquiry. Lord John Russell's reform of criminal discipline ought to begin with a practical examination into the nature of crime and of the means to repress it. He cannot begin at a later stage without adopting gross and culpable assumptions. What, for instance, is the nature of the crimes for which capi- tal punishment is inflicted; what is the nature of the process by which that punishment acts on the mind? Until these two ques- tions are answered, all " mitigations" of the law by which it is inflicted are mere quackery. Some part of such an inquiry relates to evidence of facts; some part belongs to a priori considerations based on the knowledge of the human mind. Take almost any well-known case you please—any one of the immense number, with motives so varied as almost to equal the cases in number ; consider in each case the state of the criminal, and ask how such a risk as that of hanging could have acted on his mind ?
Look at one of the simplest cases—that of murder in a sudden fit of jealousy. One Tapsley shot his sweetheart with a pistol, at Stepney. He was caressing her up to the moment of the murder. In fact, he was an Othello, only the *Desdemona was not " virtu- ous." Now trace the probable history of that man's mind, and discover, if you can, at what stage the idea of capital punishment became a distinct idea. Of course it was not before he contem- plated the act ; but many of the complicated motives to the crime arose and were confirmed long before the idea of the act, and therefore of the penalty, could have entered his head. He had evidently been habituated to violent and uncontrolled passions. He had formed an attachment for a girl of loose conduct; the pas- sion being mutual, sincere, and ardent. But he demanded an ab- sence of levity which is not always found even in well-cultivated natures. He was probably exacting and unreasonable, sometimes not unreasonable. But inasmuch as he had no recognized claim on the girl, all that she conceded was, to her apprehension, a spontaneous devotion which rebuked his self-seeking exactions. Such seems to have been the state of matters between them, and to describe it suffices to indicate a storm of emotions that might well have mastered the criminal's reason; exasperating his in- stincts and mortifying them, intoxicating and maddening. Now it is most likely that he was put into a chronic state of that kind betbre he conceived any idea of killing his mistress ; and if so, he was placed far beyond that frame of mind in which any sense of personal consequences or danger exerts control. At length the conflict of jealousy suggested relief in destroyine-p its cause ; and now the reflection that he might be hanged ought to have come into play : but such a thought, with a man of animal courage, far gone in bitterness of heart, already prepared to drag upon himself worse than his own death, because his actual state of ex- istence was unbearable and worse than death of any sort,—such a thought to a man in such temper, if it occurred at all, would probably do no more than add bitterness to his rage—be but one element of cruelty in that fate which he imputed to the miscon- duct of the woman. He would perhaps exclaim, " Yes, I shall be hanged I she -drives me to it It is a threat—a danger— something to oppose, to fight against and dare; and thus it would
but add to the relief the passive mental suffering from which the murderer sought to escape.
The case of Blakesley, who was debarred from intercourse with his wife, and worked himself up into a fit of homicidal furor, was similar in many respects. It exhibited more decided traces of weak understanding ; but it was equally clear that by the time the idea of hanging could have occurred to the murderer he was beyond the reach of such influences. It might on the face of it be supposed that the penalty would deter in cases where the motive is such a one as avarice ond the whole affair is matter of calculation,—as in the instance of Cook, who murdered Mr. Pals : but in such cases, obviously, the pe- nalty also sinks to a mere item in the calculation ; and for many reasons it is likely to lose its due prominence. In the first place, the deed contemplated by the criminal and its direct 'objects so fully occupy the mind as to throw other things into the shade. The effect somewhat resembles that to be observed in the sense of vision when the focus of the eye is arranged to gaze intently on one object and all others become ipso facto indistinct. Again, the criminal has an ingenious plan for working out his purpose secretly : devised by himself, all its parts seem to fit with such ac- curacy that the desired result is almost inevitable : he has of course guarded against all the accidents that occur to his mind ; and others, that do not occur to his mind, cannot appear to possess much value in the estimate. After all, indeed, he knows that some chance may betray him ; but he thinks that it is a very remote chance : the final question, therefore, as it presents itself to his mind, must be, whether he shall run that small chance or not; and he does run it. In all such cases, the penalty cannot show itself as efficient to deter: it forms only a partial and subordi- nate obstruction in the path of crime—an obstruction which ap- pears to be removed by the ingenuity of the criminal. In the case of murders to conceal embarrassing deeds or dis- creditable connexions, the penalty sinks more completely to the condition of an item in calculation, with many circumstances to bias the judgment in favour of impunity. Criminals of this class, like Tawell, are often men of self-sufficient character, with san- guine reliance on the wisdom of their own plans. In such a case, the penalty presents itself as a choice between similar evils : to Tawell, it was undoubtedly the disgrace of capital punishment that most impressed him with dislike to it ; and it was the dread of disgrace which made him resolve upon effectual steps to termi- nate his connexion with Mrs. Hart. He hed full confidence in his ability to do it so as to escape detection : but, even admitting a chance of discovery, he was merely playing at double or quits with Fortune,—on the one side, discovery and embarrassment for the remainder of his life ; on the other, instant and absolute re- lief, or total destruction. His knowledge of chemistry and the trade in drugs taught him how to prearrange the murder so as to defy detection ; he had not prearranged the small circumstances which really led to detection. He had laid his plans so as to have it all his own way, and he had not intended to leave any chance which might bring him to the scaffold. No doubt, murder is often detected; but he was superior to vulgar murderers. In a scheme of the kind the idea of capital punishment must have presented itself under the form of some generality, such as an ad- mission that human calculations are liable to error. Perhaps it operated on his mind about as powerfully as the penalties against smuggling do on the Cockney traveller from Boulogne : he would not have run the risk for a trifle, but really it was necessary to his comfort that Mrs. Hart should be disposed of. In more complicated cases of crime, death by laW becomes a contingency as familiar as death by typhus fever, or any other frequent incident of a low and squalid mode of existence. The murderer of Delarue must have grown hardened to hazards of all kinds; just as the workmen at powder-mills become reckless of a danger which is momently merged in the sense of impunity-. Members of an habitually " criminal population" consider the penalties of the law as visitations of their fate, just as they ars subject to hereditary diseases. They submit to the disaster when it happens ; but to live in perpetual precautions against it is more than life is worth, especially when their very livelihood depends on crime. The born thief really cannot afford to insure his life against hanging, by promising to himself that he will under no circumstances commit murder. Considerations of trade forbid it. Probably these people, familiar with executions, reflect more than any other class about hanging ; but with no determined and active purpose of avoiding the fate, Like the inhabitants of Ca- tania, they live under a volcano; but they have neither the means to move nor even the intelligence to desire removal.
Over other classes, like Wicks, the very penalty acts as a mor- bid fascination, suggesting perverse reflections of death, and pro- yoking to an homicidal delirium.
There are not a few to whom murder is an act of self-sacrifice instigated by despair, and even by an inverted affeotion,—such as parents who murder their children to snatch them from want. If such unhappy beings think at all of the hanging, it is merely to brave the fate as an act of heroism and devotion. We have not worked out any of these cases in detail ; simply desiring to suggest the needful train of thought. On considera- tion of the subject, it will soon be perceived that the extreme penalty, as viewed by the sane, prudent, and uninflamed legis- lator who decrees it, and the morbid, desperate, maddened cul- prit who incurs it, appears two totally different things ; and that it is deficient in the essential qualities for appositeness. Let Lord John Russell look to such primary parts of the question.
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