A popular essay on subjects of penal law, and on uninterrupted solitary confinement at labor, as contradistinguished to solitary confinement at night and joint labor by day, in a letter to John Bacon / by Francis Lieber.

  • Lieber, Francis, 1800-1872.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A popular essay on subjects of penal law, and on uninterrupted solitary confinement at labor, as contradistinguished to solitary confinement at night and joint labor by day, in a letter to John Bacon / by Francis Lieber. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    forehand not actually imposed, in each case of actual trans- gression. This theory has a high degree of plausibility, and I own that I had myself arrived at it, in reflecting upon this momentous subject, when at a later period I found it had been carried out by one of the most distinguished criminalists of the age, Mr. Feuerbach, the penal lawgiver of Bavaria. Some of his followers have much developed his fundamental idea. Still, this theory is founded upon that fallacy called begging the question; for when we are asked to grant the truth, that the state has a right to warn its citizens, we either understand by warning, simply and strictly warning, or warning with the right of executing the threatened penalty in case of contraven- tion. If we mean the first, we grant nothing, and no right of punishment can be deduced from our concession; if we mean the second, we grant the very thing to be proved, namely, the right of punishing. It is likewise deficient on the same point on which we have found the others so defective; namely, it affords us no standard of punishment. The state might warn by affixing the penalty of death to the offence of picking up a valuable article in the street, without endeavoring to ascertain its owner; and though it would be indifferent to all who should never thus offend, what penalty was affixed, it would still be of the greatest importance to the offender when the warning comes to be executed. 6. Contract.—The state, it is said, is founded upon a con- tract; each member enjoys its protection on condition to con- form to its laws, and cannot complain if that evil is inflicted which, according to these laws, therefore, according to the contract, is known to be stipulated for the offence or breaking of the contract. This theory is invalidated by two objections. First, the state is not founded upon a contract, as I have en- deavored to show in a work now revising for the press.* For the present purpose it is quite sufficient to ask what sort of a contract that can possibly be, in which I had never a part, or from which I can never withdraw myself, and according to * Political Ethics.