theory, are sufficient to justify punishment: the benefit of the offender himself, and the protection of others.’[1]
And (p. 597), ‘If indeed punishment is inflicted for any other reason than in order to operate on the will; if its purpose be other than that of improving the culprit himself, or securing the just rights of others against unjust violation [‘justice,’ the reader must remember, may be for him, and Mr Mill, two different things], then, I admit, the case is totally altered. If any one thinks that there is justice in the infliction of purposeless suffering; that there is a natural affinity between the two ideas of guilt and punishment, which makes it intrinsically fitting that wherever there has been guilt, pain should be inflicted by way of retribution [the reader will not forget that for him, beside that of justice, there may also be other spheres, and possibly higher: what is merely just need not be intrinsically fitting]; I acknowledge that I can find no argument to justify punishment inflicted on this principle. As a legitimate satisfaction to feelings of indignation and resentment which are on the whole salutary and worthy of cultivation [the figments are not ‘horrid’ to Mr Mill; he seems willing even to encourage them], I can in certain cases admit it; but here it is still a means to an end. The merely retributive [‘merely’ is misleading] view of punishment derives no justification from the doctrine I support.’
Punishment to Mr Mill is ‘medicine’; and, turn himself aside as he might from the issue (p. 593-4), he could not avoid the conclusion forced on him by the ‘Inquirer,’ that if rewards carried with them the benefits of punishment, then I should deserve rewards, when, and because, I am wicked.
Now against this theory of punishment I have nothing here to say. The great and ancient names, which in punishment saw nothing but a means to the good of the State or the individual, demand that we treat that view with respect; and hence I will not
- ↑ Although it is not connected with the subject, I must continue the quotation as a specimen of our English philosophising. ‘The first justifies it, because to benefit a person cannot be to do him an injury.’ If ‘injury’ is the opposite of ‘benefit,’ the ‘because’ disappears; if of ‘justice,’ we have the unproved assertion of a controverted proposition; one which I, for instance, consider not merely false, but monstrous. The proviso of ‘a proper title’ in the following sentence makes matters no better.
