Volume 1

Criminal responsibility / by Charles Mercier.

  • Charles Arthur Mercier
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Criminal responsibility / by Charles Mercier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the matter; but it is you that must first be convinced. I would not for the world have him know it; but the ordinary man will adopt that view that you tell him to adopt. If, then, I can convince your trained intelligence, and stand the test of your critical acumen, I have no fear that my arguments will be lost upon the man in the street; who will have the arguments put before him, not in the crude and imperfect form in which they are here embodied, but refined and enlightened by passing through your mind. Next, what is here meant by punishment ? The nature of punishment cannot be determined without previous determination of its aim ; for it is manifest that not only the mode of punishment, which I do not propose to con¬ sider, but our concept of what punishment is, must vary according to the aim sought by means of punishment. This aim is usually stated to be threefold,—Retribution, Determent, and Reform. We punish, it is said, him who has done wrong, partly to satisfy the craving that exists in our minds that those who have done wrong shall suffer pain; partly to deter that and other wrong-doers from the doing of such wrongs ; and partly so to influence the mind of the wrong-doer that he shall cease to desire to do wrong. Of these three ends, the first, in my opinion, preponderates immensely over the other two. These are but secondary effects of punishment; desirable, indeed, if they can be attained without interference with the first, and often, when punishments are discussed academically, and without reference to any particular instance of crime, declared to be primary. Bentham, indeed, regards deter¬ ment of others, or example, as the most important end of punishment, and reformation as next in order. Retri¬ bution he calls ‘ a kind of collateral end,’ and admits that, as far as it can be answered gratis, it is a beneficial one,
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