In general, all establishments, where individuals who are in want, find employment, also merit the greatest commendation; but if there do not previously exist in these individuals, a habit of gaining their living honestly the end of these institutions is only in part attained. In fact, either these individuals do not resort to these work-houses, or the police is obliged to employ coercive means to withdraw them from idleness. The wisest regulations cannot always have sufficient influence, because men accustomed to idleness, find, without ceasing, an infinity of subterfuges, to escape the measures of the best regulated administration.

With a rude people, the magistrates are commonly obliged to command and to forbid, what they must do and what they must not. In revenge, the people elude these arbitrary orders of their superiors, whenever they think they can do it with impunity. But when a man has received previous education, he generally holds a better regulated course, and submits himself to the laws and regulations with less repugnance. The authorities act, then, in conformity to human nature, when they join to the ordinances, motives which oblige them, because then, even in the eyes of him to whom they might appear oppressive and arbitrary, all appearance of constraint is withdrawn. On the other hand, a benevolent legislation will avoid multiplying laws, knowing that, as St. Paul says, the more laws, the more sins.

Application of my Principles to Man, considered as an object of Correction and Punishment.

To treat this subject pertinently, would require volumes. I am, therefore, obliged to limit myself to describing the grounds on which our conduct towards malefactors should rest.

Not being well informed on the true sources of our determinations, legislators as well as moralists, have confined themselves exclusively to the will. Under

this expression they imagined to themselves, as it were, a peculiar being, and rendered independent of the organization of the sex, of the constitution, &c. At most, it was only the age of minority, which they considered as deserving some consideration. Did the man show an evil disposition? it was because he willed it. Did he do evil? it was that he had strongly wished to do it. Little was thought of the difference, which exists between the propensities and the voluntary determination; still less of the various motives, internal and external, which cause this determination. Delicts and crimes have been considered in themselves, without regard to the wants and the position of the individual who was their author. To change the will of malefactors, it was long thought sufficient to inflict penalties. Hence, every where resulted criminal laws, which only go to determine what are the culpable actions, and to fix for each of these material acts a proportionate punishment, but always the same, whatever the difference of the individual acting. The aggravating or extenuating circumstances are rather sought in accidental external things, than in the peculiar position, or the internal state of the malefactor.

If any one wishes to bring back this defective legislation to principles founded on the nature of man; if he prove the existence of innate propensities, and that man no more has the choice of possessing propensities, more or less imperious, than of having talents more or less decided; that these propensities are one of the main springs of our actions; immediately they go to the opposite extreme. If the evil propensities are innate, say they, there is no longer any culpability in vice and in crime; no one can prevent himself from doing evil; and a criminal has only to say, that he has such or such a propensity, to excuse all his actions and secure himself from every accusation.

My readers are sufficiently prepared, for me to leave to them the refutation of this language. They must also be convinced, that if men were left to themselves, they would not all find within, motives equally numer

ous and equally powerful for doing good, and avoiding evil; they know that propensities exist, whose excessive activity constitutes unlawful inclinations, whose abusive action lead to evil: they know also every man is not morally free to an equal extent, and that consequently every man, when the question relates to internal culpability, is not equally culpable, although the material act and the external guilt are the same thing. The same action may be indifferent in one man, while in another it becomes the object of moral responsibility. Thus the same action, which for one is subject of blame and just punishment, in another is only a subject of compassion. To appreciate the degree of internal criminality, it is necessary to measure accurately the influence of age, sex, the state of health, the moral condition, and a thousand other circumstances present at the moment of the illegal act. But by whom is this state of things so well known, that man can pass a uniformly equitable judgment on the merit and demerit of his fellow-men? This is possible only to that Being who searcheth the reins and the heart. This, if the question is in relation to the exercise of justice in its strictest sense, we must refer to God alone.

All wise legislation, therefore, ought to renounce the pretension of exercising justice. It ought to propose an end which it is possible to attain, and which secures the good of the citizens in particular, and that of society in general. This end ought to be, so far as the nature of man permits, to prevent delicts and crimes, to punish malefactors, and to place society in security as respects those who are incorrigible. This is all which can reasonably be required from human institutions. How can we attain this end?

Of Houses of Correction and Prisons.

There are some organizations so defective, and some combinations of circumstances so unfortunate, that it is

absolutely impossible to prevent all crimes, even the most atrocious. We can only hope, whatever means we may employ, to diminish the number of malefactors.

We have seen that the want of instruction, ignorance of moral and religious precepts, of the laws of duties toward men and toward God, are some of the principal sources of the criminal aberrations of men. We must then supply from without, what is wanting to these individuals on the part of internal organization and education. It is necessary, in the first place, that prisons should become houses of correction. The treatment which has been used in prisons toward criminals, and which still continues the same in many places, would entirely defeat the end of all correction.

Ordinary criminals, even when their crimes were different, were commonly collected in large numbers. We have, in fact, often seen individuals merely arraigned for trial, mingled with prisoners already condemned. In certain places, all were idle; ordinarily, they are occupied in labor, sometimes too easy, sometimes too difficult, often filthy and noxious, and almost always unprofitable. They avail themselves of every moment when they can escape notice, to recount to one another their adventures, each one finding great satisfaction in making known to others his own performances; and in this manner, as the prisoners themselves say, the prisons are like schools, in which all kinds of villanies are taught. The corruption of the new comer, especially when from natural propensity he finds pleasure in this species of instruction, is soon accomplished. He soon habituates himself to living in intimacy with the refuse of men. All shame, all horror of crime and of criminals, disappears; they become acquainted, make friends of each other, and concert joint plans for the future. Hardly are any set at liberty, when they seek to unite to resume with more audacity their former mode of life. There remains, in fact, to most of those who leave the prison, no other course to pursue. They are sent out without money, and without being assigned any determinate oc

cupation. In some countries, they are not even under the immediate watch of the police; many, beside, are banished, and it follows that the neighboring states are infested with banditti. It seems to me, that this last species of punishment ought, at most, to be admissible only for political offences. Is the individual subjected to the punishment of branding? he is then publicly disgraced? what will become of him? who will work with him? who will employ him? Not only are all these punishments without any real object, but they oblige these wretches to devote themselves to crime, on pain of starving to death. Branding can serve no other purpose, than to betray those malefactors who fall again into crime, and who have escaped from the prisons, to which they had been condemned for life.

The prison is not always the kind of punishment, which suits the character of the criminal and his peculiar propensities to evil. The society they enjoy, renders their lives-less miserable. If they are ill fed, they are at least secured from all the wants common to this class of men; they are clothed, and preserved from the injuries of the air. We have even seen some, who procured their own arrest, in order to find a refuge in the prison. Men and women are often left together, whence it happens that in the prisons themselves, their numbers are multiplied. Sometimes the prisoners are permitted to have their children with them. On the other hand, the punishments in prisons are often heavier than the law prescribes, especially when the buildings are dirty, or placed in a damp soil, or constructed with stones, which attract and transmit the humidity of the atmosphere. Hence arises the so general alteration of the fluids and the solids; hence emanates tumors, glandular and cutaneous affections, pneumonia, blindness, &c. If the food is bad, and consists principally in dry pulse, this. regimen is followed by dysenteries, which soon become mortal. When the punishment of a criminal is limited to a detention for a stated time, it would be in accordance with the spirit of the sentence, to inflict the punishment so as not to destroy the individu