morality, but also that every means of correcting tbeir ideas and improving their feelings must be left open to them, so long as it does not counteract the object designed by the punishment. But instruction is not to be thrust even on the criminal; and while, by the very fact of its being enforced, it loses its usefulness and efficiency, such enforcement is also contrary to the rights of the criminal, who never can be compelled to anything save suffering the legal punishment.
There is still, however, a perfectly special case, where the accused party has too many reasons against him not to lead to a strong suspicion of his guilt, but still not enough to justify his being condemned (absolutio ab instantia).[1] To grant to him, under such circumstances, the full freedom enjoyed by citizens of good repute, is hardly compatible with the solicitude for security; and a constant surveillance of his future conduct hence becomes evidently necessary. The very reasons, however, which render every positive effort on the part of the State so questionable, and which recommend us in general to substitute the efforts of single citizens for its activity wherever this is possible, incline us in this case also to prefer the surveillance voluntarily practised by the citizens to the supervision of the State; and hence it might be better to allow suspected persons of this class to give security rather than to deliver them up to the surveillance of Go- vernment, which should only be exercised in cases where securities could not be obtained. We find examples of such security given (not in this case, it is true, but in similar ones) in the legislation of England.
The last method of preventing crimes is that which, with-
- ↑ According to the law of England, a man may not be tried twice for the same crime; and the plea of autrefois acquit is a bar to any indictment. But it has been the practice in some count lies to suspend decision, as it were, where the guilt of the criminal is not sufficiently proved, and so leave it open to the prosecutors to renew the trial whenever more conclusive evidence is found,
