portion as it becomes more mild. For not only are mild punishments lesser evils of themselves, but they lead men away from crime in a way the more worthy of human nature. For the less bodily painful and terrible they are, the more do they become so in a moral point of view; while excessive physical suffering tends to lessen the sense of shame in the sufferer himself, and, in the spectator, that of indignation and censure. And from this we see that mild punishments might be much more frequently employed than at first sight would seem possible; since they gain, on the other hand, a compensating moral weight and efficiency in proportion to their mildness. The efficiency of punishments depends entirely on the impression they make respectively on the soul of the criminal; and we might almost affirm that, in a regularly graduated series, it would be indifferent where we might determine to pause as at the highest degree, since the actual efficiency of a punishment does not so much depend on its absolute nature, as on the relative place it occupies on the scale of punishments, and since that which the State declares to be the highest punishment is readily acknowledged to be such. I say we might almost affirm; for this assertion would only hold good when the punishments inflicted by the State were the only evils to be dreaded by the citizen. But so far is this from being the case, that often it is real evils which urge him actually to the commission of crime and hence the measure of the highest punishment, and therefore of the punishments in general, intended to counteract these evils, must be deter- mined with reference to them as well. Now, where the citizen enjoys such ample freedom as that which these pages advise, he will live in greater comfort, his soul will become more calm and composed, his imagination more beautiful, and punishment will admit of much relaxation in severity, while it loses none of its real force and efficiency. So true
