Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (4th ed, 1770, vol IV).djvu/24

12 the party injuring of the power to do future michief ; which is effected by either putting him to death, or condemning him to perpetual confinement, lavery, or exile. The ame one end, of preventing future crimes, is endeavoured to be anwered by each of thee three pecies of punihment. The public gains equal ecurity, whether the offender himelf be amended by wholome correction, or whether he be diabled from doing any farther harm : and if the penalty fails of both thee effects, as it may do, till the terror of his example remains as a warning to other citizens. The method however of inflicting punihment ought always to be proportioned to the particular purpoe it is meant to erve, and by no means to exceed it : therefore the pains of death, and perpetual diability by exile, lavery, or imprionment, ought never to be inflicted, but when the offender appears incorrigible : which may be collected either from a repetition of minuter offences ; or from the perpetration of ome one crime of deep malignity, which of itelf demontrates a dipoition without hope or probability of amendment : and in uch caes it would be cruelty to the public, to defer the punihment of uch a criminal, till he had an opportunity of repeating perhaps the wort of villanies. to the meaure of human punihments. From what has been obierved in the former articles we may collect, that the quantity of punihment can never be abolutely determined by any tanding invariable rule ; but it mut be left to the arbitration of the legilature to inflict uch penalties as are warranted by the laws of nature and ociety, and uch as appear to be the bet calculated to anwer the end of precaution againt future offences.

it will be evident, that what ome have o highly extolled for its equity, the lex talionis or law of retaliation, can never be in all caes an adequate or permanent rule of punihment. In ome caes indeed it eems to be dictated by natural reaon ; as in the cae of conpiracies to do an injury, or fale Rh