A COMMENTARY

ON THE ESSAY ON

CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS.

CHAP. I.

The Circumstances that occasioned this Commentary.

MY mind was full of reflexions arising from the perusal of the little work on crimes and punishments, which is in moral science, what the few remedies capable of alleviating our bodily complaints are in medicine. I flattered myself that this work would soften what remained of barbarism in the criminal jurisprudence of a great many nations; I hoped for some reformation in human nature itself; when I was informed that a girl of eighteen years of age, handsome, possessed of useful talents, and of a very respectable family, had just been hung in one of the provinces.

Her crime was, having yielded to illicit love, and in afterwards abandoning her child, the fruit of the connexion. This unhappy girl, flying from her parents house, was taken in labour, and

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delivered, alone and without assistance, near a brook. The feeling of shame, which in the sex is a powerful passion, gave her strength to return to the house of her father, and to conceal her situation. She left her child exposed; it was found the next day; the mother ascertained; condemn. ed to death, and executed.

The first fault of this girl should have been considered by her family as a family secret, or met with protection from the law; because the seducer should be bound to repair the evil he had done; because weakness has a claim to indulgence; because every feeling is in favor of a woman whose concealed pregnancy often exposes her life, at the same time that discovery of her conditiou would destroy her reputation; and, because the difficulty of providing for the support of her child is a very great additional misfortune.

Her second fault was more criminal; she abandoned the fruit of her weakness, and exposed it to the risk of perishing.

But because a child died, was it obsolutely necessary to destroy the mother? She did not murder it; she flattered herself that some passenger would have compassion for an innocent being; she might

even have had an intention of returning with the view of finding her child, and affording it every necessary assistance. This feeling, too, is so natural, that its existence in the heart of a mother ought to be presumed. I know the law is positive against a woman under the circumstances above relat ed, in the province to which I alluded; but at the same time is not this law unjust, inhuman, and pernicious? Unjust, because it makes no distinction between the woman who murders, and she who abandons her child; inhuman, because it cruelly inflicts the punishment of death on an unfortunate being, whose only crime is weakness and anxiety to conceal her miserable situation; pernicious, because it forcibly tears from society a fellow being capable of adding to the subjects of the 'state, and that too, in a province where they are sensible of the want of inhabitants. Charity has not as yet provided, in that province, houses of reception, where children who are exposed may receive necessary care where charity is wanting, law is always cruel. It would certainly be better to prevent these unhappy occurrences, which happen but too often, than simply to rest satisfied with punishing them. The real object of jurisprudence is to prevent the commission of crimes, not to punish with death the weaker sex, especially when it is evident that their faults are unaccompanied

with malice, and who are more than adequately punished by the feelings of their own hearts.

Furnish, as far as possible, to those who may be tempted to do evil, the means of avoiding it, and you will have fewer criminals to punish.

CHAP. II.

Of Punishments.

THE unfortunate occurrence, and the severe law, with which I have been so struck, induced me to cast my eyes on the criminal code of nations. The humane author of the "Essay on Crimes and Punishments" had but too much reason to complain, that the latter was, too frequently, disproportioned to the former, and sometimes even detrimental to the state they were intended to serve.

Ingenious punishments, to imagine which the human mind seems to have exhausted itself in order to render death terrible, seem rather the inventions of tyranny than of justice.

The punishment of the wheel, was first introduced into Germany during times of anarchy,

when those who usurped regal power wished to terrify, by the studied preparation of unheard-of torment, whosoever should dare to make an attempt upon their authority. In England, they ripped up the belly of a man convicted of high treason, tore out his heart, dashed it in his face, and then threw it upon the fire. And what, very frequently, constituted the crime of high treason? During the civil wars, a faithful adherence to an unfortunate monarch; and, sometimes, the expression of an opinion upon the doubtful rights of a conqueror. Time, however, rendered their manners milder; they continue notwithstanding, to tear out the heart, but it is always after the death of the criminal. The apparatus death is dreadful; but the death itself is easy, if death can ever be said to be easy.